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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 77 116
Rank change year-on-year +36 +39 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,250 882 805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.71% 3.02% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.58% 3.32% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,356 516 393
10th Percentile £325 £347 £320
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £528 £505
Median % change year-on-year -8.51% +4.46% -8.18%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.22% +2.50% +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 58 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £24.51 £24.22
25th Percentile £33.93 £38.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.50% -6.17% -3.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £74.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £63.75
% change year-on-year +12.80% -9.61% +2.00%

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 40,321 26,530 37,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.95% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,358 17,078 23,948
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,077 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.47 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +7.14%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +35 1,954 £490 -8.84% 823
UK excluding London +27 1,047 £455 -11.22% 625
London +58 945 £500 -9.05% 302
Work from Home +59 679 £486 -2.75% 390
North of England +37 267 £430 -4.44% 129
Midlands +32 231 £481 +1.32% 91
South East -11 223 £500 - 202
West Midlands +27 169 £475 - 53
North West +27 163 £420 -4.00% 76
East of England +8 120 £475 +5.56% 81
South West -6 110 £475 -17.39% 85
Yorkshire +19 94 £453 +8.63% 41
Scotland +46 73 £409 -10.41% 35
East Midlands +4 58 £525 +4.06% 38
Wales +7 21 £455 +193.55% 17
Northern Ireland +13 13 £400 -32.20% 8
North East -11 13 £450 -28.00% 14

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 91 (4.04%) Confluence
2 46 (2.04%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (1.64%) SAS
5 22 (0.98%) Apache
6 21 (0.93%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.40%) Appian
9 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 5 (0.22%) CMS
12 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.18%) CICS
14 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.089%) Documentum
Applications
1 145 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.31%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.13%) Notion
10 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.044%) Simulink
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 108 (4.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.60%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
10 7 (0.31%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.31%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.27%) iTrent
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
11 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 449 (19.96%) Azure
2 285 (12.67%) AWS
3 227 (10.09%) Power Platform
4 119 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
5 110 (4.89%) GCP
6 90 (4.00%) GitHub
7 64 (2.84%) Serverless
8 63 (2.80%) Snowflake
9 58 (2.58%) Amazon S3
10 57 (2.53%) Azure Data Factory
11 56 (2.49%) SaaS
12 55 (2.44%) Entra ID
13 48 (2.13%) OCI
14 47 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (1.73%) Microsoft 365
16 38 (1.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 35 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
18 33 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (1.29%) dbt
20 25 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.64%) Firewall
2 57 (2.53%) Network Security
3 40 (1.78%) VLAN
4 38 (1.69%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.29%) DNS
5 29 (1.29%) VPN
6 27 (1.20%) Ethernet
7 25 (1.11%) WAN
8 17 (0.76%) LAN
9 16 (0.71%) SAN
9 16 (0.71%) Wireless
10 15 (0.67%) BGP
10 15 (0.67%) OSPF
11 14 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.58%) HTTP
13 12 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.53%) NAS
14 11 (0.49%) TACACS
14 11 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (0.40%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (9.56%) Power BI
2 115 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
3 102 (4.53%) Metadata
4 79 (3.51%) Tableau
5 78 (3.47%) SQL Server
6 61 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
7 56 (2.49%) Data Lake
8 49 (2.18%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.38%) Big Data
9 31 (1.38%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.24%) Delta Lake
11 27 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 23 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.02%) Power Query
14 22 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
15 21 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.89%) BigQuery
16 20 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 205 (9.11%) JIRA
2 128 (5.69%) Git
3 84 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 58 (2.58%) GitLab
5 55 (2.44%) Selenium
6 47 (2.09%) Postman
7 41 (1.82%) JMeter
8 32 (1.42%) JUnit
9 26 (1.16%) Cucumber
9 26 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.11%) WebDriver
11 19 (0.84%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 18 (0.80%) MLflow
13 14 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
14 12 (0.53%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 11 (0.49%) Gatling
16 9 (0.40%) Gradle
16 9 (0.40%) Maven
General
1 713 (31.69%) Social Skills
2 675 (30.00%) Finance
3 429 (19.07%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (8.58%) Banking
5 189 (8.40%) Public Sector
6 121 (5.38%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (3.33%) Manufacturing
8 58 (2.58%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
9 50 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
10 49 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
11 44 (1.96%) Retail
12 38 (1.69%) Legal
13 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.51%) Marketing
14 34 (1.51%) Military
15 33 (1.47%) General Ledger
16 32 (1.42%) Telecoms
17 30 (1.33%) Front Office
18 28 (1.24%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 422 (18.76%) Analyst
2 234 (10.40%) Lead
3 201 (8.93%) Senior
4 189 (8.40%) Business Analyst
5 176 (7.82%) Data Engineer
6 158 (7.02%) Consultant
7 141 (6.27%) Architect
8 120 (5.33%) Developer
9 115 (5.11%) Data Analyst
10 83 (3.69%) Project Manager
11 58 (2.58%) Tester
12 49 (2.18%) Software Engineer
13 48 (2.13%) Senior Analyst
14 47 (2.09%) Test Engineer
15 46 (2.04%) Network Engineer
16 42 (1.87%) Systems Engineer
17 41 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
18 40 (1.78%) Test Manager
19 39 (1.73%) Security Engineer
20 36 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.29%) REST
2 79 (3.51%) JSON
3 71 (3.16%) Kafka
4 59 (2.62%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.36%) Middleware
6 50 (2.22%) OAuth
7 48 (2.13%) PySpark
8 41 (1.82%) Node.js
9 40 (1.78%) XML
10 38 (1.69%) Swagger
11 36 (1.60%) SOAP
12 35 (1.56%) Web Services
13 34 (1.51%) .NET
14 32 (1.42%) RESTful
15 31 (1.38%) Pandas
16 30 (1.33%) PyTorch
17 28 (1.24%) Playwright
18 27 (1.20%) Spring
19 26 (1.16%) TensorFlow
20 25 (1.11%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 123 (5.47%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.33%) Data Structures
3 114 (5.07%) Onboarding
4 94 (4.18%) Product Ownership
5 78 (3.47%) Cloud Native
6 71 (3.16%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.58%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.20%) Operational Technology
11 27 (1.20%) Replication
12 26 (1.16%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.11%) Life Science
13 25 (1.11%) NHS
13 25 (1.11%) Public Cloud
13 25 (1.11%) Reference Data
13 25 (1.11%) SCADA
14 24 (1.07%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 109 (4.84%) Windows
2 95 (4.22%) Linux
3 31 (1.38%) Unix
4 16 (0.71%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.53%) Android
6 8 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) zOS
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.089%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.044%) HPUX
11 1 (0.044%) pSOS
11 1 (0.044%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.044%) Solaris
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 611 (27.16%) Migration
2 456 (20.27%) Agile
3 430 (19.11%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (16.93%) Data Validation
5 376 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 366 (16.27%) Data Migration
7 358 (15.91%) CI/CD
8 349 (15.51%) Data Modelling
9 335 (14.89%) Analytics
10 326 (14.49%) User Acceptance Testing
11 297 (13.20%) ETL
12 274 (12.18%) DevOps
13 266 (11.82%) Test Automation
14 263 (11.69%) Business Intelligence
15 252 (11.20%) AI
16 240 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
17 234 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 225 (10.00%) Data Governance
19 203 (9.02%) Data Analysis
19 203 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 536 (23.82%) SQL
2 413 (18.36%) Python
3 108 (4.80%) Java
4 63 (2.80%) C#
5 57 (2.53%) C++
6 52 (2.31%) JavaScript
7 47 (2.09%) PowerShell
8 46 (2.04%) C
9 44 (1.96%) Bash
10 32 (1.42%) PL/SQL
11 31 (1.38%) TypeScript
12 30 (1.33%) R
13 28 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 26 (1.16%) Bicep
15 21 (0.93%) Scala
16 20 (0.89%) Ada
17 18 (0.80%) Apex Code
18 14 (0.62%) MATLAB
19 12 (0.53%) T-SQL
19 12 (0.53%) VBA
Qualifications
1 415 (18.44%) Security Cleared
2 303 (13.47%) SC Cleared
3 182 (8.09%) Degree
4 56 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 50 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.47%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.47%) PMI Certification
7 32 (1.42%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.24%) PMP
10 23 (1.02%) CCNP
11 19 (0.84%) ISTQB
12 17 (0.76%) CISSP
13 15 (0.67%) ACCA
13 15 (0.67%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.67%) CBAP
14 14 (0.62%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.58%) CIMA
16 12 (0.53%) CCNA
16 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (17.38%) Data Quality
2 289 (12.84%) QA
3 120 (5.33%) GDPR
4 67 (2.98%) NIST
5 60 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 28 (1.24%) GxP
7 28 (1.24%) SLA
8 25 (1.11%) IFRS
9 24 (1.07%) PMO
10 20 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.80%) GMP
11 18 (0.80%) GRC
11 18 (0.80%) HL7
12 16 (0.71%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.62%) MiFID
14 13 (0.58%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
System Software
1 80 (3.56%) Docker
2 51 (2.27%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.07%) Firmware
5 17 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.58%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (0.40%) vSphere
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.089%) Ceph
13 2 (0.089%) Lustre
13 2 (0.089%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 124 (5.51%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.27%) Terraform
3 43 (1.91%) Prometheus
4 41 (1.82%) Grafana
5 40 (1.78%) Ansible
6 30 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.58%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 9 (0.40%) Puppet
10 9 (0.40%) SCCM
11 6 (0.27%) Nessus
12 5 (0.22%) CASB
12 5 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.22%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 304 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.80%) SAP
3 192 (8.53%) Oracle
4 107 (4.76%) Databricks
5 75 (3.33%) ServiceNow
6 68 (3.02%) Salesforce
7 52 (2.31%) VMware
8 51 (2.27%) Cisco
9 48 (2.13%) Google
10 41 (1.82%) Splunk
11 33 (1.47%) Informatica
12 29 (1.29%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.24%) Sage
14 27 (1.20%) IBM
14 27 (1.20%) Workday
15 25 (1.11%) MuleSoft
16 22 (0.98%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.93%) OpenAI
18 17 (0.76%) Fortinet
18 17 (0.76%) IFS