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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 69 127
Rank change year-on-year +33 +58 +24
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,834 1,167 736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.29% 3.55% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.22% 3.92% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,710 679 361
10th Percentile £340 £350 £340
25th Percentile £410 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £488
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +5.53% -11.27%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £688 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £515 £463
% change year-on-year -10.19% +11.35% -9.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 87 123
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £28.35
25th Percentile £26.90 £38.87 £51.13
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £66.75 £68.82
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.54%

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 45,557 29,755 33,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.46% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,078 18,625 21,348
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% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,814 1,660 1,859
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £17.32 £18.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.10 £41.25
% change year-on-year +90.30% -44.00% +7.56%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +30 2,453 £500 -3.85% 1,756
UK excluding London +27 1,335 £463 -10.19% 1,119
London +40 1,174 £525 +0.96% 763
Work from Home +38 798 £492 -1.60% 611
South East +8 319 £503 +0.50% 316
Midlands +37 314 £475 +5.56% 181
North of England +40 308 £450 -9.09% 213
West Midlands +34 223 £468 +3.94% 113
North West +29 159 £450 -21.40% 123
East of England +6 148 £475 -6.40% 150
Yorkshire +41 135 £453 +4.08% 50
South West -7 128 £525 -8.70% 169
Scotland +46 95 £416 -11.20% 86
East Midlands +25 85 £509 +11.99% 68
Wales -2 26 £425 +13.33% 22
North East -36 18 £425 -22.73% 43
Northern Ireland +10 10 £380 -35.59% 4
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 82 (2.89%) Confluence
2 69 (2.43%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (1.98%) SAS
4 49 (1.73%) SharePoint
5 41 (1.45%) Apache Spark
6 32 (1.13%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) CMS
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.18%) IIS
11 5 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 194 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 40 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.46%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.28%) CATIA
8 8 (0.28%) Navisworks
8 8 (0.28%) Revit
9 7 (0.25%) ProjectWise
10 6 (0.21%) Simulink
11 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.071%) Windchill
13 1 (0.035%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.035%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.035%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.035%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 123 (4.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
3 14 (0.49%) Workday HCM
4 12 (0.42%) iTrent
4 12 (0.42%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.42%) Teamcenter
5 11 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
6 10 (0.35%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
7 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
7 9 (0.32%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
8 8 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
9 7 (0.25%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 614 (21.67%) Azure
2 336 (11.86%) AWS
3 301 (10.62%) Power Platform
4 158 (5.58%) Azure DevOps
5 149 (5.26%) GCP
6 129 (4.55%) GitHub
7 99 (3.49%) Snowflake
8 75 (2.65%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 71 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
11 70 (2.47%) Serverless
12 56 (1.98%) Amazon S3
13 55 (1.94%) SaaS
14 53 (1.87%) Microsoft 365
15 46 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 46 (1.62%) dbt
16 44 (1.55%) OCI
17 43 (1.52%) SuccessFactors
18 34 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 34 (1.20%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 113 (3.99%) Firewall
2 69 (2.43%) Network Security
3 65 (2.29%) DNS
4 54 (1.91%) VLAN
5 52 (1.83%) VPN
6 46 (1.62%) TCP/IP
7 40 (1.41%) WAN
8 37 (1.31%) BGP
9 29 (1.02%) DHCP
10 26 (0.92%) OSPF
11 24 (0.85%) LAN
12 23 (0.81%) Internet
13 21 (0.74%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.74%) Wireless
14 20 (0.71%) SAN
15 17 (0.60%) Ethernet
15 17 (0.60%) VXLAN
16 16 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
17 15 (0.53%) Ethernet VPN
17 15 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (9.88%) Power BI
2 173 (6.10%) Data Warehouse
3 115 (4.06%) Metadata
4 99 (3.49%) SQL Server
5 95 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (3.14%) Data Lake
7 86 (3.03%) Relational Database
8 79 (2.79%) Tableau
9 39 (1.38%) Big Data
10 34 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 32 (1.13%) NoSQL
12 32 (1.13%) Oracle Database
13 31 (1.09%) Delta Lake
13 31 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
14 30 (1.06%) MongoDB
15 29 (1.02%) BigQuery
15 29 (1.02%) Power Query
16 24 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 255 (9.00%) JIRA
2 187 (6.60%) Git
3 103 (3.63%) Jenkins
4 78 (2.75%) GitLab
5 70 (2.47%) Selenium
6 48 (1.69%) JMeter
7 45 (1.59%) Postman
8 38 (1.34%) Cucumber
8 38 (1.34%) JUnit
9 35 (1.24%) WebDriver
10 24 (0.85%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
12 16 (0.56%) Gatling
13 15 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.46%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.42%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.42%) Maven
15 12 (0.42%) Oracle Forms
16 11 (0.39%) Gradle
General
1 812 (28.65%) Social Skills
2 810 (28.58%) Finance
3 551 (19.44%) Analytical Skills
4 245 (8.65%) Public Sector
5 209 (7.37%) Banking
6 149 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
7 107 (3.78%) Manufacturing
8 94 (3.32%) Retail
9 69 (2.43%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 62 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 56 (1.98%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
13 46 (1.62%) Automotive
14 44 (1.55%) Legal
15 42 (1.48%) Front Office
16 41 (1.45%) Marketing
17 40 (1.41%) Law
17 40 (1.41%) Local Government
18 38 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 498 (17.57%) Analyst
2 299 (10.55%) Senior
3 284 (10.02%) Lead
4 233 (8.22%) Business Analyst
4 233 (8.22%) Data Engineer
5 209 (7.37%) Consultant
6 169 (5.96%) Developer
7 148 (5.22%) Architect
8 143 (5.05%) Data Analyst
9 105 (3.71%) Test Engineer
10 83 (2.93%) Tester
11 77 (2.72%) Project Manager
12 67 (2.36%) Network Engineer
13 57 (2.01%) Systems Engineer
14 54 (1.91%) Technical Analyst
15 53 (1.87%) Administrator
16 52 (1.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 50 (1.76%) Senior Data Engineer
18 44 (1.55%) Data Scientist
18 44 (1.55%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (5.36%) REST
2 85 (3.00%) JSON
3 77 (2.72%) Kafka
4 74 (2.61%) XML
5 73 (2.58%) PySpark
6 61 (2.15%) Middleware
7 52 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
8 49 (1.73%) .NET
9 46 (1.62%) pytest
9 46 (1.62%) Spring
10 42 (1.48%) Playwright
11 41 (1.45%) SOAP
12 37 (1.31%) Web Services
13 36 (1.27%) OAuth
14 34 (1.20%) Pandas
15 33 (1.16%) RESTful
16 29 (1.02%) Node.js
17 27 (0.95%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.88%) WireMock
19 24 (0.85%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 158 (5.58%) Onboarding
2 157 (5.54%) Data Structures
3 132 (4.66%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.38%) Cloud Native
5 120 (4.23%) Product Ownership
6 87 (3.07%) Management Information System
7 83 (2.93%) Data Centre
8 54 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 46 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
11 43 (1.52%) Life Science
12 41 (1.45%) AI Agents
13 40 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
13 40 (1.41%) SCADA
14 36 (1.27%) NHS
15 35 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
16 33 (1.16%) Operational Technology
16 33 (1.16%) Public Cloud
16 33 (1.16%) Replication
17 31 (1.09%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 166 (5.86%) Windows
2 116 (4.09%) Linux
3 59 (2.08%) Windows Server
4 42 (1.48%) Unix
5 19 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Android
6 11 (0.39%) Ubuntu
6 11 (0.39%) Windows 10
7 10 (0.35%) VMS
8 7 (0.25%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.14%) AIX
10 4 (0.14%) SUSE
10 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.071%) HPUX
11 2 (0.071%) Solaris
11 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.035%) Debian
12 1 (0.035%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 770 (27.17%) Migration
2 556 (19.62%) Agile
3 545 (19.23%) Stakeholder Management
4 503 (17.75%) CI/CD
5 477 (16.83%) Analytics
6 465 (16.41%) Data Modelling
7 464 (16.37%) User Acceptance Testing
8 461 (16.27%) Data Validation
9 457 (16.13%) Data Migration
10 449 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
11 365 (12.88%) AI
12 364 (12.84%) DevOps
13 361 (12.74%) Continuous Improvement
14 349 (12.31%) Test Automation
15 338 (11.93%) ETL
16 322 (11.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 318 (11.22%) Business Intelligence
18 298 (10.52%) Data Pipeline
19 291 (10.27%) Data Governance
20 269 (9.49%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 707 (24.95%) SQL
2 531 (18.74%) Python
3 133 (4.69%) Java
4 77 (2.72%) PowerShell
5 60 (2.12%) C#
6 57 (2.01%) Bash
7 50 (1.76%) JavaScript
8 38 (1.34%) C++
9 34 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 33 (1.16%) TypeScript
11 30 (1.06%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.02%) Bicep
13 27 (0.95%) C
14 26 (0.92%) PL/SQL
15 25 (0.88%) VBA
16 23 (0.81%) R
17 18 (0.64%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.60%) Shell Script
19 16 (0.56%) MATLAB
20 13 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 520 (18.35%) Security Cleared
2 378 (13.34%) SC Cleared
3 186 (6.56%) Degree
4 66 (2.33%) DV Cleared
5 62 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.27%) CCNP
9 27 (0.95%) ISTQB
10 24 (0.85%) ACCA
11 23 (0.81%) CIMA
12 21 (0.74%) Azure Certification
12 21 (0.74%) PMI Certification
13 20 (0.71%) PMP
14 19 (0.67%) CISSP
14 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
15 17 (0.60%) CCNA
16 16 (0.56%) AWS Certification
17 11 (0.39%) Master's Degree
18 10 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 545 (19.23%) Data Quality
2 358 (12.63%) QA
3 126 (4.45%) GDPR
4 53 (1.87%) NIST
5 47 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 38 (1.34%) GxP
7 38 (1.34%) SLA
8 37 (1.31%) PMO
9 20 (0.71%) GRC
9 20 (0.71%) ISO 20022
10 19 (0.67%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 17 (0.60%) GMP
12 14 (0.49%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.49%) NCSC
12 14 (0.49%) WCAG
13 13 (0.46%) HL7
13 13 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.42%) IFRS
System Software
1 121 (4.27%) Docker
2 97 (3.42%) Active Directory
3 76 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.78%) Firmware
7 21 (0.74%) Hyper-V
8 20 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (0.67%) vSphere
10 13 (0.46%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.14%) KVM
12 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.11%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.035%) Ceph
15 1 (0.035%) etcd
Systems Management
1 158 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 134 (4.73%) Terraform
3 63 (2.22%) Ansible
4 54 (1.91%) Grafana
5 51 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.85%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.42%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.35%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.35%) VxRail
11 9 (0.32%) SCCM
12 7 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
13 6 (0.21%) Argo
14 5 (0.18%) CASB
14 5 (0.18%) systemd
14 5 (0.18%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Data Guard
15 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
15 4 (0.14%) Puppet
Vendors
1 420 (14.82%) Microsoft
2 256 (9.03%) SAP
3 247 (8.72%) Oracle
4 151 (5.33%) Databricks
5 91 (3.21%) Salesforce
6 89 (3.14%) VMware
7 78 (2.75%) ServiceNow
8 64 (2.26%) Cisco
9 51 (1.80%) Google
10 47 (1.66%) Workday
11 38 (1.34%) Informatica
12 33 (1.16%) IBM
13 31 (1.09%) Splunk
14 30 (1.06%) Fortinet
14 30 (1.06%) Palo Alto
15 29 (1.02%) Juniper
15 29 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 28 (0.99%) Zscaler
17 24 (0.85%) Sage
18 20 (0.71%) Ariba