Validation Contracts

Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Validation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Validation over the 6 months leading up to 7 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 72 117 155
Rank change year-on-year +45 +38 +23
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,081 843 965
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.39% 1.95% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 2.28% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 644 413 550
10th Percentile £350 £325 £375
25th Percentile £420 £400 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £555
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.91% +5.71%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £700
90th Percentile £700 £675 £978
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 177 159
10th Percentile £18.68 £26.88 £42.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £47.83 £55.00
Median hourly rate £57.75 £60.00 £63.23
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -5.11% +26.46%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.25 £84.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% +25.00%

All Process and 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 28,907 36,912 51,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.67% 85.33% 89.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,194 23,557 35,146
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +0.92%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,436 2,507 1,728
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £12.79
25th Percentile £17.44 £16.09 £16.98
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £38.99
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -3.82% +49.95%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.03
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.82% +66.81%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Validation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Validation.

Daily rate trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 7 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Validation.

Hourly rate trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 7 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 Contract 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 7 July 2025. 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 +39 945 £525 +5.00% 1,591
UK excluding London +25 503 £508 +1.50% 1,058
London +91 444 £550 +10.00% 655
Work from Home +48 307 £500 -4.76% 649
South East +49 158 £500 -4.76% 312
North of England +9 93 £450 +0.56% 173
South West -1 84 £575 +8.24% 165
East of England +4 69 £475 -1.30% 172
Midlands +1 64 £438 -20.05% 153
North West +19 60 £469 -2.24% 120
West Midlands -16 42 £405 -28.13% 116
Scotland +29 32 £469 -2.60% 67
Yorkshire -1 28 £417 -3.47% 43
East Midlands +10 21 £455 +12.22% 37
Wales +13 6 £265 - 35
North East -2 6 £550 +10.00% 12
Northern Ireland -14 4 £590 +7.27% 15
Channel Islands - 1 - -

Validation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 95 (8.79%) Confluence
2 24 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 22 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 10 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.74%) Apache
5 8 (0.74%) WebLogic
6 7 (0.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 7 (0.65%) SAS
7 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.28%) Oracle Service Bus
8 3 (0.28%) Smallworld
9 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.19%) Documentum
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle Spatial
9 2 (0.19%) TPMS
10 1 (0.093%) CICS
10 1 (0.093%) CMS
10 1 (0.093%) IBM Domino
10 1 (0.093%) WebSphere
Applications
1 72 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (3.42%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.76%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.74%) Simulink
6 7 (0.65%) Oracle Smart View
7 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.19%) CANalyzer
8 2 (0.19%) Stateflow
9 1 (0.093%) Adobe Captivate
9 1 (0.093%) Fusion 360
9 1 (0.093%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.093%) Trello
Business Applications
1 43 (3.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (2.87%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (1.30%) SAP MDG
4 12 (1.11%) Teamcenter
5 10 (0.93%) Oracle Payables
6 7 (0.65%) Oracle Assets
6 7 (0.65%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 7 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
6 7 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.65%) SAP CO
6 7 (0.65%) SAP FI
6 7 (0.65%) SAP FI/CO
7 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
7 5 (0.46%) SAP PM
7 5 (0.46%) Workday HCM
8 4 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 4 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
8 4 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
8 4 (0.37%) SAP PS
8 4 (0.37%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 134 (12.40%) Azure
2 103 (9.53%) AWS
3 79 (7.31%) Power Platform
4 43 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
5 40 (3.70%) GCP
6 32 (2.96%) OCI
7 31 (2.87%) SaaS
8 18 (1.67%) Cloud Computing
8 18 (1.67%) GitHub
8 18 (1.67%) Serverless
9 17 (1.57%) Azure Data Factory
10 16 (1.48%) PaaS
11 15 (1.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 13 (1.20%) Snowflake
13 12 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (1.11%) dbt
13 12 (1.11%) Entra ID
14 11 (1.02%) Amazon S3
14 11 (1.02%) Dynamics 365
15 9 (0.83%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 55 (5.09%) Firewall
2 37 (3.42%) VPN
3 28 (2.59%) BGP
4 24 (2.22%) Network Security
5 21 (1.94%) MPLS
6 20 (1.85%) OSPF
7 14 (1.30%) DNS
7 14 (1.30%) Ethernet
8 13 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 12 (1.11%) 5G
10 11 (1.02%) WAN
11 10 (0.93%) Cisco IOS
11 10 (0.93%) IPsec
11 10 (0.93%) VoIP
11 10 (0.93%) Wireless
12 9 (0.83%) Cisco Nexus
12 9 (0.83%) PBX
12 9 (0.83%) SNMP
12 9 (0.83%) VXLAN
13 8 (0.74%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (6.57%) Power BI
2 59 (5.46%) Data Warehouse
3 37 (3.42%) Oracle Reports
4 34 (3.15%) Tableau
5 25 (2.31%) SQL Server
6 20 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
7 18 (1.67%) NoSQL
8 17 (1.57%) Metadata
9 16 (1.48%) Amazon Redshift
9 16 (1.48%) Oracle Database
10 15 (1.39%) Relational Database
11 12 (1.11%) Data Lake
12 10 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
12 10 (0.93%) MySQL
12 10 (0.93%) SAP Data Services
13 9 (0.83%) BigQuery
13 9 (0.83%) Delta Lake
13 9 (0.83%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 9 (0.83%) Qlik Sense
14 8 (0.74%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 136 (12.58%) JIRA
2 57 (5.27%) Git
3 50 (4.63%) Jenkins
4 31 (2.87%) Postman
5 24 (2.22%) Selenium
6 18 (1.67%) Cucumber
7 17 (1.57%) Bitbucket
8 16 (1.48%) Cypress.io
8 16 (1.48%) GitLab
9 15 (1.39%) Eclipse
10 13 (1.20%) JMeter
10 13 (1.20%) REST Assured
10 13 (1.20%) Visual Studio
11 10 (0.93%) Rational DOORS
12 7 (0.65%) LoadRunner
12 7 (0.65%) Robot Framework
13 6 (0.56%) GoogleTest
13 6 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
13 6 (0.56%) SoapUI
13 6 (0.56%) Zephyr
General
1 438 (40.52%) Social Skills
2 269 (24.88%) Finance
3 259 (23.96%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (7.31%) Banking
5 63 (5.83%) Presentation Skills
6 57 (5.27%) Public Sector
7 47 (4.35%) Front Office
8 42 (3.89%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (3.61%) Telecoms
10 32 (2.96%) Marketing
11 30 (2.78%) Retail
12 26 (2.41%) Investment Banking
12 26 (2.41%) Manufacturing
13 23 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.94%) Pharmaceutical
15 20 (1.85%) Aerospace
15 20 (1.85%) Electronics
15 20 (1.85%) Military
15 20 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 219 (20.26%) Analyst
2 108 (9.99%) Senior
3 102 (9.44%) Consultant
4 98 (9.07%) Business Analyst
5 73 (6.75%) Lead
6 71 (6.57%) Data Analyst
7 53 (4.90%) Developer
8 50 (4.63%) Data Engineer
9 42 (3.89%) Network Engineer
10 38 (3.52%) Architect
10 38 (3.52%) Systems Engineer
11 35 (3.24%) Tester
12 31 (2.87%) Test Engineer
13 30 (2.78%) Project Manager
14 28 (2.59%) Senior Analyst
15 26 (2.41%) SAP Consultant
16 25 (2.31%) Test Analyst
17 23 (2.13%) Software Engineer
18 20 (1.85%) Data Consultant
19 18 (1.67%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.16%) REST
2 37 (3.42%) Web Services
3 26 (2.41%) SOAP
4 25 (2.31%) JSON
5 24 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 24 (2.22%) RESTful
6 20 (1.85%) Kafka
6 20 (1.85%) Node.js
6 20 (1.85%) XML
7 16 (1.48%) Middleware
8 15 (1.39%) CSS
9 14 (1.30%) Pandas
10 13 (1.20%) HTML
11 12 (1.11%) SAP Fiori
12 11 (1.02%) Flash
13 10 (0.93%) PySpark
13 10 (0.93%) React
14 8 (0.74%) OAuth
15 7 (0.65%) Gherkin
15 7 (0.65%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 59 (5.46%) Legacy Systems
2 44 (4.07%) Management Information System
3 42 (3.89%) Product Ownership
4 36 (3.33%) Onboarding
5 29 (2.68%) Data Structures
6 22 (2.04%) Data Centre
7 21 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
8 20 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
9 19 (1.76%) FPGA
10 17 (1.57%) Cloud Native
10 17 (1.57%) Derivative
11 16 (1.48%) Verilog
12 15 (1.39%) Replication
13 14 (1.30%) Algorithms
14 13 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.20%) SCADA
15 12 (1.11%) IoT
16 11 (1.02%) Credit Risk
16 11 (1.02%) Multi-touch
Operating Systems
1 79 (7.31%) Linux
2 63 (5.83%) Windows
3 25 (2.31%) Unix
4 19 (1.76%) Windows Server
5 13 (1.20%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.65%) Android
7 3 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
8 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.19%) zOS
9 1 (0.093%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.093%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.093%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.093%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 290 (26.83%) Problem-Solving
2 264 (24.42%) Migration
3 245 (22.66%) Agile
4 163 (15.08%) Data Validation
5 152 (14.06%) Data Migration
6 129 (11.93%) User Acceptance Testing
7 127 (11.75%) Test Automation
8 120 (11.10%) Analytics
9 119 (11.01%) Data Analysis
9 119 (11.01%) ETL
10 118 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
11 115 (10.64%) DevOps
12 109 (10.08%) CI/CD
13 108 (9.99%) Business Intelligence
14 100 (9.25%) Data Modelling
15 96 (8.88%) Data Governance
16 79 (7.31%) Computer Science
16 79 (7.31%) Project Management
17 77 (7.12%) Project Delivery
18 74 (6.85%) Verification and Validation
Programming Languages
1 268 (24.79%) SQL
2 203 (18.78%) Python
3 49 (4.53%) Java
4 36 (3.33%) JavaScript
5 31 (2.87%) PL/SQL
6 30 (2.78%) Bash
6 30 (2.78%) C++
7 29 (2.68%) PowerShell
8 28 (2.59%) C#
9 21 (1.94%) Shell Script
10 20 (1.85%) R
11 16 (1.48%) SystemVerilog
11 16 (1.48%) Tcl
12 15 (1.39%) VBA
13 12 (1.11%) TypeScript
14 11 (1.02%) MATLAB
15 10 (0.93%) Apex Code
16 9 (0.83%) Scala
17 8 (0.74%) ABAP
17 8 (0.74%) Perl
Qualifications
1 194 (17.95%) Security Cleared
2 160 (14.80%) SC Cleared
3 156 (14.43%) Degree
4 62 (5.74%) Cisco Certification
5 53 (4.90%) CCNP
6 37 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (3.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 30 (2.78%) Master's Degree
8 29 (2.68%) DV Cleared
9 27 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
10 25 (2.31%) CCNA
11 17 (1.57%) PhD
12 16 (1.48%) ISTQB
13 13 (1.20%) AWS Certification
14 12 (1.11%) CBAP
15 11 (1.02%) CISSP
15 11 (1.02%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.93%) OCA
16 10 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.93%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (11.75%) Data Quality
2 117 (10.82%) QA
3 28 (2.59%) GDPR
4 24 (2.22%) MiFID
5 16 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (1.39%) IFRS
7 13 (1.20%) EMIR
7 13 (1.20%) GxP
8 12 (1.11%) NIST
9 10 (0.93%) IFRS 9
10 9 (0.83%) PMO
10 9 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.65%) Accessibility
11 7 (0.65%) COBIT
11 7 (0.65%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.56%) HL7
12 6 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 17025
12 6 (0.56%) SEPA
13 5 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.46%) SLA
System Software
1 50 (4.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
3 20 (1.85%) Active Directory
4 17 (1.57%) VMware NSX
5 15 (1.39%) Docker
6 12 (1.11%) vSphere
7 9 (0.83%) Firmware
8 7 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.28%) OpenAM
10 2 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
10 2 (0.19%) FreeRADIUS
10 2 (0.19%) iptables
11 1 (0.093%) KVM
11 1 (0.093%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.093%) QEMU
11 1 (0.093%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.093%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 1 (0.093%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.093%) Xen
Systems Management
1 54 (5.00%) Ansible
2 29 (2.68%) vCenter Server
3 25 (2.31%) Kubernetes
4 16 (1.48%) Puppet
4 16 (1.48%) Terraform
5 13 (1.20%) Progress Chef
6 8 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.56%) HP ALM
7 6 (0.56%) PowerCLI
7 6 (0.56%) vRealize
8 5 (0.46%) Grafana
9 4 (0.37%) EnCase
9 4 (0.37%) FTK
10 3 (0.28%) SCCM
10 3 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.19%) Control-M
11 2 (0.19%) Nagios
11 2 (0.19%) Netcool
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.19%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 133 (12.30%) Microsoft
2 130 (12.03%) Oracle
3 94 (8.70%) SAP
4 69 (6.38%) VMware
5 60 (5.55%) Cisco
6 46 (4.26%) Salesforce
7 43 (3.98%) ServiceNow
8 29 (2.68%) Atlassian
9 28 (2.59%) Databricks
10 27 (2.50%) Workday
11 25 (2.31%) Google
12 15 (1.39%) Xilinx
13 13 (1.20%) F5
13 13 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 12 (1.11%) Informatica
14 12 (1.11%) Juniper
15 11 (1.02%) Ariba
15 11 (1.02%) EMC
15 11 (1.02%) Nokia
16 10 (0.93%) Adobe