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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 94 136
Rank change year-on-year +50 +42 0
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,054 772 762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.62% 2.66% 1.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 2.94% 1.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,263 453 394
10th Percentile £350 £363 £325
25th Percentile £403 £420 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -7.24% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £623
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -6.86% +2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 45 145
10th Percentile £22.25 £27.35 £19.35
25th Percentile £46.18 £47.50 £48.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% +0.83% -4.60%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.15 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £61.00
% change year-on-year +7.44% -0.82% -2.40%

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 38,117 26,296 38,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.75% 90.49% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,146 17,083 24,839
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 956 2,346
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.12 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.94 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.35 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £31.64 £31.80
% change year-on-year -1.23% -0.50% -11.67%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 +43 1,780 £490 -9.26% 872
UK excluding London +46 976 £475 -6.86% 714
London +68 830 £501 -9.00% 268
Work from Home +71 626 £492 -4.00% 341
North of England +36 237 £443 -6.84% 152
South East -5 205 £500 - 215
Midlands +35 192 £492 +3.58% 118
North West +28 152 £416 -7.56% 74
West Midlands +26 150 £486 -0.38% 77
South West +11 138 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +19 125 £489 +8.63% 96
Yorkshire +6 76 £461 +9.75% 51
Scotland +41 54 £405 -10.50% 42
East Midlands -1 40 £525 +42.86% 41
Northern Ireland +18 23 £400 -27.27% 5
Wales - 17 £460 - 16
North East -3 12 £450 -37.93% 27

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 81 (3.94%) Confluence
2 41 (2.00%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.70%) SAS
5 20 (0.97%) Apache
5 20 (0.97%) SharePoint
6 15 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.44%) Appian
7 9 (0.44%) ArcGIS
8 8 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.24%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) CICS
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.097%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.097%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 113 (5.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.19%) CATIA
8 4 (0.19%) Notion
9 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.097%) Sketch
11 1 (0.049%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.049%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.049%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.049%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.049%) Simulink
11 1 (0.049%) UXPin
11 1 (0.049%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (4.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.75%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.73%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 13 (0.63%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.54%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.49%) SAP FI
8 9 (0.44%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.39%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 8 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.39%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.34%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.34%) iTrent
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 7 (0.34%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.34%) SAP MDG
10 7 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 485 (23.61%) Azure
2 271 (13.19%) AWS
3 178 (8.67%) Power Platform
4 148 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
5 100 (4.87%) GitHub
6 96 (4.67%) GCP
7 62 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
7 62 (3.02%) Serverless
8 60 (2.92%) Entra ID
9 59 (2.87%) Amazon S3
10 58 (2.82%) Azure Data Factory
11 53 (2.58%) SaaS
12 49 (2.39%) OCI
13 45 (2.19%) Snowflake
14 39 (1.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 35 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
16 31 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (1.51%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.36%) OpenShift
18 26 (1.27%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 75 (3.65%) Firewall
2 51 (2.48%) Network Security
3 36 (1.75%) TCP/IP
4 26 (1.27%) DNS
5 25 (1.22%) VLAN
5 25 (1.22%) VPN
6 24 (1.17%) Ethernet
7 21 (1.02%) HTTP
8 20 (0.97%) WAN
9 15 (0.73%) SAN
10 13 (0.63%) NAS
11 11 (0.54%) BGP
11 11 (0.54%) OSPF
11 11 (0.54%) SD-WAN
11 11 (0.54%) Wireless
12 10 (0.49%) LAN
13 9 (0.44%) Internet
13 9 (0.44%) SSL
14 8 (0.39%) Cisco ISE
15 7 (0.34%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (8.08%) Power BI
2 109 (5.31%) Metadata
3 102 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
4 69 (3.36%) SQL Server
5 59 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (2.87%) Tableau
6 47 (2.29%) Data Lake
7 35 (1.70%) Delta Lake
8 30 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
8 30 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
8 30 (1.46%) Relational Database
9 29 (1.41%) Big Data
10 26 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.22%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.07%) Oracle Database
12 22 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (1.02%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 20 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
15 19 (0.93%) Pinecone
16 18 (0.88%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 195 (9.49%) JIRA
2 125 (6.09%) Git
3 91 (4.43%) Jenkins
4 66 (3.21%) Selenium
5 55 (2.68%) GitLab
5 55 (2.68%) Postman
6 37 (1.80%) JUnit
7 36 (1.75%) Cucumber
8 35 (1.70%) JMeter
9 34 (1.66%) Rational DOORS
10 28 (1.36%) Oracle APEX
11 21 (1.02%) MLflow
11 21 (1.02%) WebDriver
12 19 (0.93%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.68%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.63%) Bitbucket
14 13 (0.63%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.63%) TestRail
15 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 703 (34.23%) Social Skills
2 594 (28.92%) Finance
3 405 (19.72%) Analytical Skills
4 185 (9.01%) Public Sector
5 173 (8.42%) Banking
6 110 (5.36%) Documentation Skills
7 64 (3.12%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.73%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.39%) Pharmaceutical
9 49 (2.39%) Presentation Skills
10 38 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
11 36 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (1.70%) Electronics
13 34 (1.66%) Marketing
14 31 (1.51%) Legal
14 31 (1.51%) Telecoms
15 30 (1.46%) Billing
15 30 (1.46%) Retail
16 28 (1.36%) Military
17 26 (1.27%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 382 (18.60%) Analyst
2 209 (10.18%) Senior
3 206 (10.03%) Lead
4 177 (8.62%) Business Analyst
5 147 (7.16%) Consultant
6 140 (6.82%) Data Engineer
7 139 (6.77%) Developer
8 132 (6.43%) Architect
9 94 (4.58%) Data Analyst
10 76 (3.70%) Project Manager
11 62 (3.02%) Tester
12 49 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
12 49 (2.39%) Software Engineer
13 44 (2.14%) SAP Consultant
14 42 (2.04%) Test Analyst
14 42 (2.04%) Test Engineer
15 40 (1.95%) Senior Developer
16 39 (1.90%) Test Manager
17 37 (1.80%) Systems Engineer
18 36 (1.75%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (6.67%) REST
2 106 (5.16%) JSON
3 62 (3.02%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.97%) XML
5 58 (2.82%) Kafka
6 53 (2.58%) Middleware
6 53 (2.58%) OAuth
7 50 (2.43%) PySpark
8 44 (2.14%) SOAP
9 42 (2.04%) Node.js
10 38 (1.85%) .NET
11 34 (1.66%) Playwright
12 32 (1.56%) RESTful
12 32 (1.56%) Swagger
12 32 (1.56%) Web Services
13 31 (1.51%) pytest
14 30 (1.46%) PyTorch
15 26 (1.27%) SAML
15 26 (1.27%) TensorFlow
16 25 (1.22%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 117 (5.70%) Legacy Systems
2 106 (5.16%) Data Structures
3 89 (4.33%) Onboarding
4 86 (4.19%) Product Ownership
5 62 (3.02%) Cloud Native
6 56 (2.73%) Management Information System
7 49 (2.39%) Data Centre
8 35 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
9 34 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
10 28 (1.36%) Replication
11 25 (1.22%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.17%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.12%) Life Science
14 21 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.02%) NHS
15 20 (0.97%) Operational Technology
15 20 (0.97%) Public Cloud
15 20 (0.97%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 102 (4.97%) Windows
2 85 (4.14%) Linux
3 31 (1.51%) Unix
4 12 (0.58%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.54%) Android
6 6 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.29%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.29%) zOS
7 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.15%) VMS
10 2 (0.097%) Debian
10 2 (0.097%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.049%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.049%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.049%) pSOS
11 1 (0.049%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.049%) Solaris
11 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (24.44%) Migration
2 457 (22.25%) Agile
3 426 (20.74%) Problem-Solving
4 360 (17.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 357 (17.38%) CI/CD
6 345 (16.80%) Data Validation
7 315 (15.34%) Analytics
8 298 (14.51%) DevOps
9 296 (14.41%) Data Migration
10 294 (14.31%) Data Modelling
11 275 (13.39%) ETL
12 257 (12.51%) Test Automation
12 257 (12.51%) User Acceptance Testing
13 235 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
14 224 (10.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 215 (10.47%) AI
16 213 (10.37%) Business Intelligence
16 213 (10.37%) Data Governance
17 178 (8.67%) Data Pipeline
18 168 (8.18%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 500 (24.34%) SQL
2 384 (18.70%) Python
3 101 (4.92%) Java
4 91 (4.43%) JavaScript
5 74 (3.60%) C#
6 53 (2.58%) PL/SQL
6 53 (2.58%) PowerShell
7 50 (2.43%) C++
8 45 (2.19%) C
9 36 (1.75%) Bash
9 36 (1.75%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 26 (1.27%) Bicep
11 26 (1.27%) R
12 21 (1.02%) Ada
13 19 (0.93%) T-SQL
14 17 (0.83%) Scala
15 16 (0.78%) Groovy
16 13 (0.63%) VBA
17 11 (0.54%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 432 (21.03%) Security Cleared
2 312 (15.19%) SC Cleared
3 188 (9.15%) Degree
4 64 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 54 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 40 (1.95%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.61%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.51%) ISTQB
9 28 (1.36%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.27%) PMP
11 18 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (0.78%) CISSP
13 15 (0.73%) CCNP
13 15 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.68%) AWS Certification
15 13 (0.63%) CBAP
16 12 (0.58%) Azure Certification
17 10 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.49%) Oracle Certification
18 9 (0.44%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (16.60%) Data Quality
2 267 (13.00%) QA
3 117 (5.70%) GDPR
4 79 (3.85%) NIST
5 68 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.51%) Accessibility
7 28 (1.36%) SLA
8 24 (1.17%) GxP
9 22 (1.07%) IFRS
10 20 (0.97%) Def Stans
11 19 (0.93%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.88%) PMO
13 16 (0.78%) GRC
14 15 (0.73%) GMP
15 14 (0.68%) HL7
15 14 (0.68%) NCSC
15 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.63%) COBIT
16 13 (0.63%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (3.80%) Docker
2 47 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.36%) Firmware
5 11 (0.54%) Hyper-V
5 11 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.34%) vSphere
8 5 (0.24%) NFS
9 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.15%) Embedded Firmware
11 2 (0.097%) Ceph
11 2 (0.097%) KVM
11 2 (0.097%) Lustre
11 2 (0.097%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.097%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.097%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.097%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 117 (5.70%) Kubernetes
2 89 (4.33%) Terraform
3 31 (1.51%) Prometheus
3 31 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.46%) Ansible
5 29 (1.41%) Grafana
6 14 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (0.54%) Kibana
7 11 (0.54%) Puppet
8 9 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.34%) SCCM
10 6 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.29%) Nessus
11 5 (0.24%) CASB
11 5 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 267 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 208 (10.13%) Oracle
3 176 (8.57%) SAP
4 109 (5.31%) Databricks
5 86 (4.19%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.43%) Google
7 49 (2.39%) Salesforce
8 45 (2.19%) VMware
9 43 (2.09%) Splunk
10 38 (1.85%) Cisco
11 34 (1.66%) Workday
12 32 (1.56%) MuleSoft
13 31 (1.51%) Informatica
14 28 (1.36%) Sage
15 22 (1.07%) IBM
15 22 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 20 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 20 (0.97%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.68%) Dell
18 13 (0.63%) Bloomberg