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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 66 107
Rank change year-on-year +35 +41 +45
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,168 1,229 816
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.81% 3.72% 2.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.87% 4.11% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,860 700 412
10th Percentile £341 £337 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -7.19%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £592
90th Percentile £700 £688 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -6.00% +3.15% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 89 96
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.71 £41.25 £47.19
Median hourly rate £53.50 £62.50 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year -14.40% -1.96% -5.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.63
90th Percentile £80.30 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -11.54% +1.96% -7.94%

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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 2,707 £500 -2.44% 4,308
UK excluding London +36 1,459 £470 -6.00% 2,573
London +39 1,319 £525 - 1,969
Work from Home +27 880 £500 - 1,536
North of England +54 361 £460 +4.55% 445
South East +6 336 £525 +5.00% 623
Midlands +38 298 £463 -2.63% 390
West Midlands +25 211 £451 -11.23% 250
North West +28 184 £472 +11.06% 243
South West +19 176 £525 -4.55% 316
Scotland +53 149 £459 -14.62% 337
Yorkshire +51 147 £463 -2.63% 144
East of England -7 143 £469 -3.85% 349
East Midlands +32 84 £490 +5.95% 140
North East -17 35 £425 -11.92% 59
Wales +4 24 £363 -3.33% 62
Northern Ireland +7 4 £363 -27.50% 82
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 2

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 95 (3.00%) Confluence
2 64 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
3 61 (1.93%) SharePoint
4 50 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 45 (1.42%) SAS
6 41 (1.29%) Apache
7 21 (0.66%) CMS
8 20 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
9 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
10 11 (0.35%) Jupyter
11 9 (0.28%) IIS
11 9 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
12 8 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
13 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.19%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.16%) CICS
15 5 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.16%) Tuxedo
16 4 (0.13%) JBoss
Applications
1 209 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.26%) MS Visio
4 32 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.54%) AutoCAD
7 12 (0.38%) Navisworks
7 12 (0.38%) Revit
8 10 (0.32%) ProjectWise
9 9 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
9 9 (0.28%) Simulink
10 4 (0.13%) CATIA
10 4 (0.13%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.095%) OrCAD
12 2 (0.063%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.063%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.032%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.032%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.032%) Trello
Business Applications
1 115 (3.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (0.60%) SAP FI
3 17 (0.54%) Workday HCM
4 15 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
4 15 (0.47%) SAP SD
5 14 (0.44%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 14 (0.44%) SAP HCM
6 13 (0.41%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.41%) NetSuite
6 13 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.41%) Teamcenter
7 12 (0.38%) SAP MDG
8 11 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
8 11 (0.35%) SAP MM
9 10 (0.32%) iTrent
9 10 (0.32%) SAP CO
9 10 (0.32%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
10 9 (0.28%) SAP PS
11 8 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 612 (19.32%) Azure
2 360 (11.36%) AWS
3 320 (10.10%) Power Platform
4 191 (6.03%) Azure DevOps
5 164 (5.18%) GCP
6 156 (4.92%) GitHub
7 111 (3.50%) Snowflake
8 106 (3.35%) Entra ID
9 80 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
10 74 (2.34%) Azure Data Factory
11 64 (2.02%) SaaS
12 63 (1.99%) Amazon S3
13 62 (1.96%) Serverless
14 59 (1.86%) dbt
14 59 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
15 50 (1.58%) SuccessFactors
16 41 (1.29%) Azure Monitor
16 41 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
17 39 (1.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 35 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (3.41%) Firewall
2 82 (2.59%) DNS
3 61 (1.93%) Network Security
3 61 (1.93%) VLAN
4 59 (1.86%) VPN
5 52 (1.64%) TCP/IP
6 51 (1.61%) BGP
7 41 (1.29%) WAN
8 36 (1.14%) DHCP
9 30 (0.95%) OSPF
9 30 (0.95%) VXLAN
10 27 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
11 26 (0.82%) Ethernet
12 25 (0.79%) Wireless
13 23 (0.73%) LAN
14 22 (0.69%) Internet
15 21 (0.66%) SAN
15 21 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.63%) 5G
16 20 (0.63%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (9.31%) Power BI
2 173 (5.46%) Data Warehouse
3 149 (4.70%) Metadata
4 126 (3.98%) Relational Database
5 111 (3.50%) SQL Server
6 101 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (2.62%) Data Lake
8 66 (2.08%) Tableau
9 43 (1.36%) Delta Lake
10 42 (1.33%) MongoDB
11 40 (1.26%) Oracle Database
11 40 (1.26%) Power Query
12 37 (1.17%) BigQuery
12 37 (1.17%) Redis
13 36 (1.14%) Big Data
14 35 (1.10%) NoSQL
15 30 (0.95%) MySQL
16 29 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
17 28 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
18 25 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 282 (8.90%) JIRA
2 235 (7.42%) Git
3 108 (3.41%) Jenkins
4 101 (3.19%) GitLab
5 81 (2.56%) Selenium
6 45 (1.42%) Postman
7 35 (1.10%) JMeter
8 26 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.76%) Rational DOORS
10 21 (0.66%) JUnit
11 20 (0.63%) WebDriver
11 20 (0.63%) Zephyr
12 19 (0.60%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.41%) Gatling
16 13 (0.41%) TestRail
17 12 (0.38%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 906 (28.60%) Finance
2 899 (28.38%) Social Skills
3 638 (20.14%) Analytical Skills
4 290 (9.15%) Banking
5 276 (8.71%) Public Sector
6 141 (4.45%) Manufacturing
7 128 (4.04%) Documentation Skills
8 92 (2.90%) Retail
9 76 (2.40%) Automotive
10 74 (2.34%) Telecoms
11 73 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 59 (1.86%) Aerospace
13 58 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
14 57 (1.80%) Legal
15 53 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
16 51 (1.61%) Marketing
17 47 (1.48%) Billing
18 46 (1.45%) Local Government
19 43 (1.36%) Front Office
20 42 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 532 (16.79%) Analyst
2 391 (12.34%) Senior
3 286 (9.03%) Lead
4 262 (8.27%) Consultant
5 254 (8.02%) Data Engineer
6 236 (7.45%) Business Analyst
7 206 (6.50%) Developer
8 172 (5.43%) Data Analyst
9 168 (5.30%) Architect
10 113 (3.57%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.56%) Tester
12 78 (2.46%) Network Engineer
13 65 (2.05%) Senior Data Engineer
14 64 (2.02%) Administrator
15 59 (1.86%) Senior Analyst
15 59 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
16 57 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 52 (1.64%) Software Engineer
18 47 (1.48%) Data Scientist
19 46 (1.45%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (6.57%) REST
2 206 (6.50%) Terraform
3 99 (3.13%) JSON
4 92 (2.90%) PySpark
5 89 (2.81%) Middleware
6 86 (2.71%) XML
7 75 (2.37%) Kafka
8 63 (1.99%) Playwright
9 60 (1.89%) OAuth
10 57 (1.80%) .NET
11 56 (1.77%) Web Services
12 53 (1.67%) pytest
13 52 (1.64%) SOAP
14 48 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
15 46 (1.45%) OpenID
16 45 (1.42%) RESTful
17 44 (1.39%) OAuth2
18 37 (1.17%) Spring
19 36 (1.14%) Pandas
20 35 (1.10%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 185 (5.84%) Onboarding
2 175 (5.52%) Data Structures
3 146 (4.61%) Cloud Native
4 128 (4.04%) Management Information System
5 124 (3.91%) Legacy Systems
6 122 (3.85%) Product Ownership
7 97 (3.06%) Data Centre
8 71 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
9 64 (2.02%) AI Agents
10 62 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
11 49 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
12 46 (1.45%) Life Science
13 43 (1.36%) Algorithms
14 42 (1.33%) Replication
15 41 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
15 41 (1.29%) SCADA
16 36 (1.14%) NHS
16 36 (1.14%) Operational Technology
17 35 (1.10%) CMDB
17 35 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 220 (6.94%) Windows
2 145 (4.58%) Linux
3 91 (2.87%) Windows Server
4 60 (1.89%) Unix
5 22 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.51%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.41%) Android
8 11 (0.35%) AIX
8 11 (0.35%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.25%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.22%) Windows 7
11 6 (0.19%) VMS
11 6 (0.19%) zOS
12 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.095%) CentOS
13 3 (0.095%) VxWorks
14 2 (0.063%) HPUX
14 2 (0.063%) Solaris
14 2 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 853 (26.93%) Migration
2 711 (22.44%) Stakeholder Management
3 637 (20.11%) CI/CD
4 602 (19.00%) Agile
5 516 (16.29%) Data Modelling
6 503 (15.88%) Data Migration
7 502 (15.85%) User Acceptance Testing
8 501 (15.81%) Analytics
9 487 (15.37%) Data Validation
10 485 (15.31%) Problem-Solving
11 453 (14.30%) AI
12 451 (14.24%) Continuous Improvement
13 435 (13.73%) DevOps
14 428 (13.51%) Test Automation
15 354 (11.17%) ETL
16 340 (10.73%) Business Intelligence
17 330 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 325 (10.26%) Data Governance
19 322 (10.16%) Data Analysis
20 305 (9.63%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 842 (26.58%) SQL
2 687 (21.69%) Python
3 157 (4.96%) Java
4 126 (3.98%) PowerShell
5 81 (2.56%) C#
5 81 (2.56%) JavaScript
6 67 (2.11%) Bash
7 52 (1.64%) TypeScript
8 45 (1.42%) C++
9 32 (1.01%) Shell Script
10 31 (0.98%) Bicep
10 31 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 29 (0.92%) R
12 27 (0.85%) PL/SQL
13 26 (0.82%) Apex Code
13 26 (0.82%) C
14 22 (0.69%) Go
15 21 (0.66%) VBA
16 19 (0.60%) T-SQL
17 17 (0.54%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 650 (20.52%) Security Cleared
2 494 (15.59%) SC Cleared
3 223 (7.04%) Degree
4 96 (3.03%) DV Cleared
5 79 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 49 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 45 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
8 38 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 36 (1.14%) CCNP
10 34 (1.07%) ACCA
10 34 (1.07%) CIMA
11 28 (0.88%) ISTQB
12 25 (0.79%) Azure Certification
13 24 (0.76%) CISSP
13 24 (0.76%) PMI Certification
14 22 (0.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 22 (0.69%) PMP
15 19 (0.60%) DBS Check
15 19 (0.60%) Master's Degree
16 15 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 673 (21.24%) Data Quality
2 376 (11.87%) QA
3 98 (3.09%) GDPR
4 55 (1.74%) Accessibility
5 50 (1.58%) SLA
6 36 (1.14%) NIST
7 35 (1.10%) GxP
8 34 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 34 (1.07%) PMO
9 24 (0.76%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 23 (0.73%) GRC
11 21 (0.66%) ISO 20022
12 18 (0.57%) WCAG
13 16 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.51%) GMP
14 14 (0.44%) NCSC
15 12 (0.38%) IFRS
16 11 (0.35%) ISO 19650
17 10 (0.32%) Def Stans
17 10 (0.32%) MiFID
System Software
1 120 (3.79%) Active Directory
2 113 (3.57%) Docker
3 92 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
5 34 (1.07%) Virtual Machines
6 27 (0.85%) Firmware
7 25 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.76%) Hyper-V
9 23 (0.73%) vSphere
10 16 (0.51%) VMware NSX
11 7 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.16%) KVM
13 4 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.13%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.063%) NFS
14 2 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.032%) HDFS
15 1 (0.032%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.032%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.032%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 161 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 114 (3.60%) Ansible
3 44 (1.39%) Grafana
4 35 (1.10%) Prometheus
5 26 (0.82%) FortiGate
5 26 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.69%) SCCM
7 20 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.41%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.35%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.35%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.32%) Functional Safety
11 9 (0.28%) Argo
11 9 (0.28%) Control-M
12 6 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (0.19%) Kibana
12 6 (0.19%) VxRail
13 5 (0.16%) Puppet
13 5 (0.16%) vMotion
13 5 (0.16%) vRealize
Vendors
1 493 (15.56%) Microsoft
2 271 (8.55%) SAP
3 245 (7.73%) Oracle
4 185 (5.84%) Databricks
5 108 (3.41%) VMware
6 97 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 90 (2.84%) Salesforce
8 88 (2.78%) Cisco
9 75 (2.37%) Google
10 58 (1.83%) Workday
11 52 (1.64%) IBM
12 34 (1.07%) Informatica
13 33 (1.04%) Fortinet
14 30 (0.95%) Zscaler
15 29 (0.92%) Palo Alto
16 26 (0.82%) Juniper
17 23 (0.73%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.63%) Ariba
18 20 (0.63%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.63%) Red Hat