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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 68 115
Rank change year-on-year +36 +47 +35
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,052 1,210 780
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.58% 3.67% 2.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.61% 4.06% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,800 690 384
10th Percentile £331 £325 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £507 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.28% +1.30% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £591
90th Percentile £701 £688 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.40% +5.26% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 88 102
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £30.00
25th Percentile £26.90 £41.25 £51.06
Median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.69% - -2.61%
75th Percentile £72.66 £67.00 £70.81
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.69% - -5.11%

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 46,183 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,080 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,092 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.31% -47.37% +5.81%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 +33 2,620 £500 -2.44% 4,277
UK excluding London +29 1,389 £463 -7.40% 2,567
London +36 1,293 £525 - 2,043
Work from Home +30 841 £500 - 1,611
North of England +42 336 £450 +5.32% 433
South East +2 330 £510 +2.00% 643
Midlands +37 307 £475 - 368
West Midlands +25 216 £473 -0.42% 249
North West +20 162 £450 +5.88% 250
Yorkshire +44 150 £463 -2.63% 120
South West +16 145 £525 -4.55% 333
East of England -4 141 £463 -8.87% 400
Scotland +42 124 £440 -13.04% 313
East Midlands +33 87 £490 -2.00% 118
North East -23 29 £425 -5.56% 66
Wales -3 24 £363 -3.33% 60
Northern Ireland +3 4 £363 -40.33% 55
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 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 88 (2.88%) Confluence
2 67 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 61 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 54 (1.77%) SAS
5 44 (1.44%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.02%) Apache
7 20 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.39%) CMS
10 9 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.29%) SharePoint 2013
11 8 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.23%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.20%) WebLogic
14 5 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 4 (0.13%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.13%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 215 (7.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.38%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.11%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.49%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.33%) Navisworks
7 10 (0.33%) Revit
8 9 (0.29%) ProjectWise
9 8 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
10 6 (0.20%) CATIA
10 6 (0.20%) Simulink
11 4 (0.13%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.066%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.066%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.066%) Windchill
13 1 (0.033%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.033%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.033%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.033%) Trello
Business Applications
1 120 (3.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.49%) SAP SD
4 13 (0.43%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.43%) SAP FI
4 13 (0.43%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 12 (0.39%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.36%) iTrent
6 11 (0.36%) SAP HCM
6 11 (0.36%) SAP MM
7 9 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 9 (0.29%) SAP CO
7 9 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
7 9 (0.29%) SAP PS
8 8 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 615 (20.15%) Azure
2 349 (11.44%) AWS
3 308 (10.09%) Power Platform
4 183 (6.00%) Azure DevOps
5 144 (4.72%) GCP
6 137 (4.49%) GitHub
7 108 (3.54%) Snowflake
8 91 (2.98%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 70 (2.29%) Azure Data Factory
11 62 (2.03%) Serverless
12 59 (1.93%) SaaS
13 58 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 58 (1.90%) dbt
13 58 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
14 39 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
15 38 (1.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
17 35 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 32 (1.05%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 111 (3.64%) Firewall
2 76 (2.49%) DNS
3 69 (2.26%) VLAN
4 60 (1.97%) Network Security
5 53 (1.74%) VPN
6 50 (1.64%) BGP
7 47 (1.54%) TCP/IP
8 44 (1.44%) WAN
9 35 (1.15%) DHCP
10 30 (0.98%) OSPF
11 29 (0.95%) VXLAN
12 26 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
13 25 (0.82%) Wireless
14 24 (0.79%) LAN
15 22 (0.72%) HTTP
15 22 (0.72%) Internet
15 22 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 21 (0.69%) Ethernet
17 20 (0.66%) SAN
17 20 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 286 (9.37%) Power BI
2 170 (5.57%) Data Warehouse
3 131 (4.29%) Metadata
4 120 (3.93%) Relational Database
5 105 (3.44%) SQL Server
6 94 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
7 84 (2.75%) Data Lake
8 75 (2.46%) Tableau
9 43 (1.41%) Oracle Database
10 38 (1.25%) Delta Lake
10 38 (1.25%) MongoDB
11 36 (1.18%) Big Data
12 35 (1.15%) Power Query
13 33 (1.08%) BigQuery
13 33 (1.08%) NoSQL
14 31 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
14 31 (1.02%) Redis
14 31 (1.02%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 30 (0.98%) MySQL
16 28 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 272 (8.91%) JIRA
2 225 (7.37%) Git
3 103 (3.37%) Jenkins
4 93 (3.05%) GitLab
5 83 (2.72%) Selenium
6 42 (1.38%) Postman
7 35 (1.15%) JMeter
8 26 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.75%) Rational DOORS
10 22 (0.72%) WebDriver
11 19 (0.62%) JUnit
12 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.52%) Cypress.io
13 16 (0.52%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.52%) Zephyr
14 15 (0.49%) Gatling
14 15 (0.49%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
16 12 (0.39%) Maven
16 12 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 870 (28.51%) Finance
2 869 (28.47%) Social Skills
3 611 (20.02%) Analytical Skills
4 261 (8.55%) Banking
5 257 (8.42%) Public Sector
6 144 (4.72%) Documentation Skills
7 120 (3.93%) Manufacturing
8 97 (3.18%) Retail
9 70 (2.29%) Telecoms
10 68 (2.23%) Automotive
11 67 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
13 58 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
14 56 (1.83%) Legal
15 52 (1.70%) Marketing
16 51 (1.67%) Aerospace
17 46 (1.51%) Front Office
17 46 (1.51%) Law
18 41 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
18 41 (1.34%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 539 (17.66%) Analyst
2 347 (11.37%) Senior
3 273 (8.94%) Lead
4 247 (8.09%) Business Analyst
5 242 (7.93%) Consultant
6 241 (7.90%) Data Engineer
7 191 (6.26%) Developer
8 159 (5.21%) Data Analyst
9 157 (5.14%) Architect
10 114 (3.74%) Test Engineer
11 78 (2.56%) Network Engineer
12 77 (2.52%) Tester
13 65 (2.13%) Systems Engineer
14 60 (1.97%) Administrator
15 59 (1.93%) Senior Data Engineer
16 56 (1.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 56 (1.83%) Project Manager
17 55 (1.80%) Senior Analyst
18 51 (1.67%) Software Engineer
19 50 (1.64%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 190 (6.23%) REST
2 169 (5.54%) Terraform
3 101 (3.31%) JSON
4 89 (2.92%) PySpark
5 84 (2.75%) XML
6 80 (2.62%) Middleware
7 74 (2.42%) Kafka
8 58 (1.90%) Playwright
9 54 (1.77%) .NET
10 48 (1.57%) SOAP
10 48 (1.57%) Web Services
11 46 (1.51%) Oracle Fusion
11 46 (1.51%) pytest
12 45 (1.47%) OAuth
13 39 (1.28%) Pandas
13 39 (1.28%) RESTful
14 38 (1.25%) Spring
15 34 (1.11%) Spring Boot
16 33 (1.08%) HTML
17 32 (1.05%) React
Miscellaneous
1 169 (5.54%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.37%) Data Structures
3 132 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 123 (4.03%) Legacy Systems
5 113 (3.70%) Product Ownership
6 110 (3.60%) Management Information System
7 92 (3.01%) Data Centre
8 57 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
9 55 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 51 (1.67%) AI Agents
11 45 (1.47%) Life Science
12 44 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
13 43 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
14 42 (1.38%) SCADA
15 38 (1.25%) Operational Technology
16 37 (1.21%) NHS
16 37 (1.21%) Replication
17 36 (1.18%) Algorithms
18 32 (1.05%) CMDB
18 32 (1.05%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 201 (6.59%) Windows
2 135 (4.42%) Linux
3 79 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 56 (1.83%) Unix
5 22 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.49%) Android
6 15 (0.49%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 11 (0.36%) VMS
8 9 (0.29%) AIX
8 9 (0.29%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.23%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.13%) SUSE
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.098%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.066%) CentOS
12 2 (0.066%) HPUX
12 2 (0.066%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 826 (27.06%) Migration
2 661 (21.66%) Stakeholder Management
3 601 (19.69%) Agile
4 585 (19.17%) CI/CD
5 500 (16.38%) Data Modelling
6 495 (16.22%) User Acceptance Testing
7 490 (16.06%) Analytics
8 480 (15.73%) Data Validation
9 479 (15.69%) Data Migration
10 472 (15.47%) Problem-Solving
11 419 (13.73%) AI
12 408 (13.37%) DevOps
13 398 (13.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 394 (12.91%) Test Automation
15 347 (11.37%) ETL
16 328 (10.75%) Business Intelligence
17 318 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 314 (10.29%) Data Analysis
19 310 (10.16%) Data Pipeline
20 308 (10.09%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 801 (26.25%) SQL
2 633 (20.74%) Python
3 151 (4.95%) Java
4 102 (3.34%) PowerShell
5 73 (2.39%) JavaScript
6 72 (2.36%) C#
7 63 (2.06%) Bash
8 44 (1.44%) C++
9 43 (1.41%) TypeScript
10 32 (1.05%) Apex Code
11 31 (1.02%) R
12 29 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 29 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 29 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 25 (0.82%) Bicep
13 25 (0.82%) C
14 18 (0.59%) VBA
15 17 (0.56%) T-SQL
16 16 (0.52%) MATLAB
17 15 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 597 (19.56%) Security Cleared
2 440 (14.42%) SC Cleared
3 204 (6.68%) Degree
4 83 (2.72%) DV Cleared
5 69 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 49 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
8 39 (1.28%) CCNP
9 31 (1.02%) ACCA
9 31 (1.02%) AWS Certification
9 31 (1.02%) CIMA
10 27 (0.88%) ISTQB
11 26 (0.85%) Azure Certification
11 26 (0.85%) PMI Certification
12 25 (0.82%) PMP
13 18 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 18 (0.59%) Master's Degree
14 17 (0.56%) CISSP
15 16 (0.52%) CCNA
16 15 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 635 (20.81%) Data Quality
2 373 (12.22%) QA
3 107 (3.51%) GDPR
4 52 (1.70%) Accessibility
5 42 (1.38%) SLA
6 39 (1.28%) GxP
6 39 (1.28%) NIST
7 36 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 36 (1.18%) PMO
8 22 (0.72%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 22 (0.72%) ISO 20022
9 21 (0.69%) GRC
10 18 (0.59%) WCAG
11 17 (0.56%) GMP
12 15 (0.49%) NCSC
13 14 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.36%) Def Stans
14 11 (0.36%) IFRS
14 11 (0.36%) MiFID
15 10 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 117 (3.83%) Docker
2 100 (3.28%) Active Directory
3 90 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (0.95%) Firmware
7 26 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 26 (0.85%) vSphere
8 23 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.52%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.16%) KVM
12 4 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.098%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.066%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.066%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.066%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.033%) Ceph
15 1 (0.033%) etcd
15 1 (0.033%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 144 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 98 (3.21%) Ansible
3 44 (1.44%) Grafana
4 35 (1.15%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.85%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.62%) SCCM
8 18 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.49%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.49%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.33%) Failover Clustering
10 10 (0.33%) VxRail
11 9 (0.29%) Argo
12 8 (0.26%) Progress Chef
13 7 (0.23%) Functional Safety
14 6 (0.20%) Control-M
14 6 (0.20%) Microsoft Clustering
15 5 (0.16%) systemd
15 5 (0.16%) vMotion
15 5 (0.16%) vRealize
Vendors
1 462 (15.14%) Microsoft
2 262 (8.58%) SAP
3 254 (8.32%) Oracle
4 167 (5.47%) Databricks
5 105 (3.44%) VMware
6 101 (3.31%) Salesforce
7 88 (2.88%) Cisco
8 79 (2.59%) ServiceNow
9 57 (1.87%) Google
10 50 (1.64%) Workday
11 45 (1.47%) IBM
12 36 (1.18%) Informatica
13 32 (1.05%) Fortinet
14 29 (0.95%) Juniper
14 29 (0.95%) Zscaler
15 28 (0.92%) Palo Alto
16 24 (0.79%) Splunk
17 22 (0.72%) MuleSoft
18 18 (0.59%) Red Hat
18 18 (0.59%) Sage