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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 75 124
Rank change year-on-year +37 +49 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,490 975 810
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.01% 3.33% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.91% 3.66% 2.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,480 583 399
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.75% +2.44% -7.24%
75th Percentile £593 £630 £599
90th Percentile £700 £702 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -9.76% +2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 61 171
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.56 £37.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.68 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.51% +0.81% -0.84%

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 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +34 2,162 £500 -4.76% 903
UK excluding London +31 1,185 £463 -9.76% 735
London +54 1,030 £513 -6.82% 273
Work from Home +53 735 £481 -3.78% 444
North of England +45 299 £437 -2.83% 150
Midlands +33 266 £498 +13.71% 127
South East -3 251 £503 +0.65% 229
West Midlands +24 191 £484 +20.10% 72
North West +34 174 £420 -4.00% 82
South West +3 131 £500 -13.04% 106
East of England +7 129 £488 +8.33% 88
Yorkshire +19 110 £458 +1.67% 51
Scotland +43 81 £400 -15.79% 29
East Midlands +16 70 £525 +16.67% 55
Wales +11 25 £455 +193.55% 13
North East -12 18 £438 -25.53% 19
Northern Ireland +13 14 £400 -32.20% 15

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 (3.41%) Confluence
2 60 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
3 49 (1.97%) SAS
4 45 (1.81%) Apache Spark
5 35 (1.41%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.92%) Apache
7 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.36%) Appian
9 9 (0.36%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.20%) CMS
10 5 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.12%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 157 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.45%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.36%) CATIA
7 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.16%) Simulink
10 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.080%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.080%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.080%) Sketch
11 2 (0.080%) Windchill
12 1 (0.040%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.040%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.040%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.040%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.040%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 120 (4.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.41%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.64%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.48%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.36%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
8 8 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.28%) Sage X3
9 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.24%) iTrent
10 6 (0.24%) SAP FI
10 6 (0.24%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 494 (19.84%) Azure
2 320 (12.85%) AWS
3 239 (9.60%) Power Platform
4 128 (5.14%) Azure DevOps
4 128 (5.14%) GCP
5 117 (4.70%) GitHub
6 82 (3.29%) Snowflake
7 66 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
8 63 (2.53%) Entra ID
8 63 (2.53%) Serverless
9 59 (2.37%) Azure Data Factory
10 58 (2.33%) Amazon S3
11 57 (2.29%) SaaS
12 42 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
13 41 (1.65%) OCI
14 38 (1.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 37 (1.49%) dbt
16 34 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 91 (3.65%) Firewall
2 61 (2.45%) Network Security
3 43 (1.73%) VLAN
4 41 (1.65%) DNS
5 35 (1.41%) TCP/IP
5 35 (1.41%) VPN
6 32 (1.29%) WAN
7 24 (0.96%) Ethernet
8 20 (0.80%) BGP
9 19 (0.76%) LAN
9 19 (0.76%) OSPF
9 19 (0.76%) SAN
9 19 (0.76%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.68%) DHCP
11 16 (0.64%) Wireless
12 15 (0.60%) Internet
13 14 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.48%) HTTP
14 12 (0.48%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (8.92%) Power BI
2 124 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (3.82%) SQL Server
4 88 (3.53%) Metadata
5 72 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
6 71 (2.85%) Tableau
7 67 (2.69%) Data Lake
8 54 (2.17%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.37%) Big Data
10 32 (1.29%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.24%) Oracle Database
12 30 (1.20%) NoSQL
13 29 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.08%) Power Query
15 25 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
16 24 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
17 23 (0.92%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.92%) Delta Lake
17 23 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 21 (0.84%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 221 (8.88%) JIRA
2 139 (5.58%) Git
3 96 (3.86%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.65%) GitLab
5 56 (2.25%) Selenium
6 53 (2.13%) Postman
7 47 (1.89%) JMeter
8 37 (1.49%) JUnit
9 34 (1.37%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.20%) WebDriver
11 27 (1.08%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.68%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.64%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.60%) MLflow
15 11 (0.44%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.40%) Gatling
16 10 (0.40%) Gradle
16 10 (0.40%) Maven
17 9 (0.36%) Bitbucket
General
1 734 (29.48%) Social Skills
2 732 (29.40%) Finance
3 442 (17.75%) Analytical Skills
4 213 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 203 (8.15%) Banking
6 140 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (3.45%) Manufacturing
8 70 (2.81%) Aerospace
9 54 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
10 53 (2.13%) Retail
11 48 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
12 41 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 41 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
13 40 (1.61%) Legal
13 40 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
14 37 (1.49%) General Ledger
14 37 (1.49%) Marketing
14 37 (1.49%) Telecoms
15 36 (1.45%) Front Office
16 31 (1.24%) Law
Job Titles
1 436 (17.51%) Analyst
2 254 (10.20%) Lead
3 233 (9.36%) Senior
4 211 (8.47%) Business Analyst
5 189 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 179 (7.19%) Consultant
7 154 (6.18%) Architect
8 137 (5.50%) Developer
9 118 (4.74%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.45%) Project Manager
11 68 (2.73%) Test Engineer
12 63 (2.53%) Tester
13 48 (1.93%) Test Manager
14 47 (1.89%) Network Engineer
14 47 (1.89%) Software Engineer
15 46 (1.85%) Senior Analyst
16 44 (1.77%) Systems Engineer
16 44 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
17 41 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
17 41 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (5.18%) REST
2 81 (3.25%) JSON
3 69 (2.77%) Kafka
4 55 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.01%) OAuth
6 49 (1.97%) XML
7 48 (1.93%) Middleware
8 45 (1.81%) PySpark
9 40 (1.61%) Swagger
10 39 (1.57%) RESTful
10 39 (1.57%) SOAP
11 38 (1.53%) .NET
12 36 (1.45%) pytest
13 34 (1.37%) Spring
14 33 (1.33%) Pandas
15 32 (1.29%) Web Services
16 30 (1.20%) Node.js
17 29 (1.16%) OAuth2
18 27 (1.08%) Playwright
18 27 (1.08%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 130 (5.22%) Legacy Systems
2 122 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 120 (4.82%) Data Structures
4 110 (4.42%) Product Ownership
5 100 (4.02%) Cloud Native
6 80 (3.21%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.45%) Management Information System
8 49 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
9 44 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.49%) Life Science
11 36 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
12 35 (1.41%) SCADA
13 33 (1.33%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.20%) Replication
15 29 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
15 29 (1.16%) NHS
15 29 (1.16%) Reference Data
15 29 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 28 (1.12%) Public Cloud
17 27 (1.08%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 129 (5.18%) Windows
2 95 (3.82%) Linux
3 35 (1.41%) Unix
4 26 (1.04%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.48%) Android
5 12 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) VMS
7 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.20%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.080%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.080%) HPUX
11 2 (0.080%) Solaris
11 2 (0.080%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.080%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.080%) zOS
12 1 (0.040%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 661 (26.55%) Migration
2 481 (19.32%) Agile
3 426 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
4 421 (16.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 414 (16.63%) Data Validation
6 411 (16.51%) CI/CD
7 392 (15.74%) Data Migration
8 388 (15.58%) User Acceptance Testing
9 384 (15.42%) Data Modelling
10 372 (14.94%) Analytics
11 310 (12.45%) ETL
12 305 (12.25%) AI
12 305 (12.25%) DevOps
13 296 (11.89%) Test Automation
14 271 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
15 269 (10.80%) Business Intelligence
16 260 (10.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 231 (9.28%) Data Analysis
18 229 (9.20%) Data Governance
19 228 (9.16%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 574 (23.05%) SQL
2 445 (17.87%) Python
3 115 (4.62%) Java
4 64 (2.57%) PowerShell
5 56 (2.25%) C#
6 48 (1.93%) Bash
7 45 (1.81%) C++
8 43 (1.73%) C
9 39 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.33%) Bicep
11 32 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (1.12%) TypeScript
13 26 (1.04%) Apex Code
14 25 (1.00%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.92%) R
16 22 (0.88%) Ada
17 20 (0.80%) Scala
18 17 (0.68%) MATLAB
19 15 (0.60%) T-SQL
20 14 (0.56%) VBA
Qualifications
1 453 (18.19%) Security Cleared
2 334 (13.41%) SC Cleared
3 185 (7.43%) Degree
4 65 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 50 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 46 (1.85%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.12%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.00%) CCNP
10 24 (0.96%) PMP
11 21 (0.84%) ISTQB
11 21 (0.84%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.80%) ACCA
13 18 (0.72%) CIMA
14 17 (0.68%) CISSP
15 15 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 12 (0.48%) CCNA
17 12 (0.48%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 430 (17.27%) Data Quality
2 302 (12.13%) QA
3 118 (4.74%) GDPR
4 64 (2.57%) NIST
5 55 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.37%) SLA
8 31 (1.24%) GxP
8 31 (1.24%) PMO
9 27 (1.08%) IFRS
10 19 (0.76%) GRC
11 18 (0.72%) GMP
11 18 (0.72%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.68%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.68%) HL7
13 14 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.48%) NIST 800
System Software
1 100 (4.02%) Docker
2 66 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 57 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.80%) Firmware
7 18 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.64%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.56%) vSphere
10 10 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.24%) NFS
12 4 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.080%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.080%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.040%) Ceph
15 1 (0.040%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 144 (5.78%) Kubernetes
2 112 (4.50%) Terraform
3 54 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.93%) Grafana
5 45 (1.81%) Ansible
6 28 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.36%) Kibana
9 9 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.32%) Puppet
10 8 (0.32%) SCCM
11 6 (0.24%) Nessus
11 6 (0.24%) vMotion
12 5 (0.20%) Argo
12 5 (0.20%) Istio
12 5 (0.20%) VxRail
13 4 (0.16%) CASB
13 4 (0.16%) Consul
13 4 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 333 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 222 (8.92%) SAP
3 215 (8.63%) Oracle
4 119 (4.78%) Databricks
5 82 (3.29%) Salesforce
6 73 (2.93%) ServiceNow
7 69 (2.77%) VMware
8 51 (2.05%) Cisco
9 50 (2.01%) Google
10 43 (1.73%) Splunk
11 32 (1.29%) Informatica
12 31 (1.24%) Workday
13 28 (1.12%) MuleSoft
13 28 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.12%) Sage
14 23 (0.92%) IBM
15 22 (0.88%) Fortinet
16 21 (0.84%) IFS
16 21 (0.84%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.80%) CyberArk