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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 68 109
Rank change year-on-year +39 +41 +46
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,284 1,206 830
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.94% 3.63% 2.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.01% 4.01% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,936 692 423
10th Percentile £350 £350 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £591
90th Percentile £700 £688 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.90% +2.56% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 215 86 95
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.93 £41.25 £46.88
Median hourly rate £53.50 £63.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.08% +2.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% +4.00% -8.13%

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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +39 2,804 £500 -2.44% 682
UK excluding London +41 1,527 £471 -5.90% 557
London +42 1,353 £525 - 219
Work from Home +28 912 £500 - 1,092
North of England +49 380 £463 +2.78% 87
South East +9 339 £525 +5.00% 176
Midlands +46 328 £450 -5.26% 84
West Midlands +30 238 £451 -9.90% 53
North West +21 194 £470 +10.59% 40
South West +17 177 £525 -4.55% 102
Yorkshire +55 155 £471 -0.95% 29
Scotland +52 155 £467 -14.08% 27
East of England +2 150 £475 -5.00% 82
East Midlands +37 87 £438 -2.67% 31
North East -12 36 £425 -11.92% 19
Wales +2 27 £363 -3.33% 10
Northern Ireland 0 4 £363 -19.44% 7
Channel Islands -4 1 - - 4

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
1 109 (3.32%) Confluence
2 65 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
2 65 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 62 (1.89%) SAS
4 53 (1.61%) Apache Spark
5 44 (1.34%) Apache
6 23 (0.70%) CMS
7 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
8 12 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.33%) IIS
9 11 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
10 9 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.18%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.15%) CICS
14 5 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
14 5 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 217 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.28%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.55%) AutoCAD
7 13 (0.40%) Navisworks
8 12 (0.37%) Revit
9 11 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
10 10 (0.30%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.27%) Simulink
12 4 (0.12%) CATIA
13 3 (0.091%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.091%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.091%) OrCAD
14 2 (0.061%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.061%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.061%) EPLAN
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.030%) Trello
Business Applications
1 116 (3.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.64%) SAP FI
3 17 (0.52%) Workday HCM
4 16 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 16 (0.49%) SAP SD
5 14 (0.43%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 14 (0.43%) SAP HCM
6 13 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
6 13 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
7 12 (0.37%) SAP MDG
7 12 (0.37%) SAP MM
8 11 (0.33%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.30%) iTrent
9 10 (0.30%) SAP CO
9 10 (0.30%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 629 (19.15%) Azure
2 390 (11.88%) AWS
3 322 (9.81%) Power Platform
4 202 (6.15%) Azure DevOps
5 168 (5.12%) GitHub
6 165 (5.02%) GCP
7 115 (3.50%) Entra ID
8 113 (3.44%) Snowflake
9 82 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
10 75 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 67 (2.04%) SaaS
12 66 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 66 (2.01%) Serverless
13 64 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
14 59 (1.80%) dbt
15 50 (1.52%) SuccessFactors
16 44 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
17 43 (1.31%) Azure Monitor
18 38 (1.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 37 (1.13%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 115 (3.50%) Firewall
2 92 (2.80%) DNS
3 63 (1.92%) VLAN
3 63 (1.92%) VPN
4 61 (1.86%) Network Security
5 55 (1.67%) TCP/IP
6 54 (1.64%) BGP
7 43 (1.31%) WAN
8 37 (1.13%) DHCP
9 33 (1.00%) OSPF
10 29 (0.88%) VXLAN
11 28 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
12 27 (0.82%) Ethernet
13 24 (0.73%) Wireless
14 22 (0.67%) HTTP
14 22 (0.67%) Internet
15 21 (0.64%) LAN
15 21 (0.64%) SAN
15 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
15 21 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (8.95%) Power BI
2 175 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
3 157 (4.78%) Metadata
4 131 (3.99%) Relational Database
5 112 (3.41%) SQL Server
6 107 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
7 87 (2.65%) Data Lake
8 64 (1.95%) Tableau
9 46 (1.40%) Delta Lake
10 45 (1.37%) MongoDB
11 42 (1.28%) Power Query
12 41 (1.25%) Oracle Database
13 38 (1.16%) Redis
14 36 (1.10%) Big Data
14 36 (1.10%) BigQuery
15 35 (1.07%) NoSQL
16 32 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
17 29 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (0.88%) MySQL
18 26 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 299 (9.10%) JIRA
2 256 (7.80%) Git
3 120 (3.65%) Jenkins
4 107 (3.26%) GitLab
5 84 (2.56%) Selenium
6 48 (1.46%) Postman
7 37 (1.13%) JMeter
8 28 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.76%) JUnit
10 23 (0.70%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.64%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.64%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.61%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.52%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
15 14 (0.43%) TestRail
16 13 (0.40%) Gatling
16 13 (0.40%) Gradle
General
1 944 (28.75%) Finance
2 916 (27.89%) Social Skills
3 661 (20.13%) Analytical Skills
4 307 (9.35%) Banking
5 286 (8.71%) Public Sector
6 150 (4.57%) Manufacturing
7 131 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 91 (2.77%) Retail
9 76 (2.31%) Automotive
10 75 (2.28%) Telecoms
11 70 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 63 (1.92%) Aerospace
13 61 (1.86%) Legal
14 58 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
15 55 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
16 52 (1.58%) Marketing
17 47 (1.43%) Billing
18 46 (1.40%) Local Government
19 45 (1.37%) General Ledger
20 44 (1.34%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 558 (16.99%) Analyst
2 403 (12.27%) Senior
3 290 (8.83%) Lead
4 274 (8.34%) Data Engineer
5 266 (8.10%) Consultant
6 246 (7.49%) Business Analyst
7 204 (6.21%) Developer
8 184 (5.60%) Data Analyst
9 175 (5.33%) Architect
10 115 (3.50%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.47%) Tester
12 80 (2.44%) Network Engineer
13 68 (2.07%) Administrator
14 65 (1.98%) Senior Data Engineer
15 63 (1.92%) Senior Analyst
16 60 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
17 56 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 52 (1.58%) Software Engineer
19 48 (1.46%) Project Manager
19 48 (1.46%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (6.67%) Terraform
2 214 (6.52%) REST
3 106 (3.23%) JSON
4 95 (2.89%) PySpark
5 92 (2.80%) Middleware
6 88 (2.68%) XML
7 82 (2.50%) Kafka
8 70 (2.13%) Playwright
9 65 (1.98%) OAuth
10 63 (1.92%) .NET
11 55 (1.67%) pytest
11 55 (1.67%) Web Services
12 53 (1.61%) OpenID
13 51 (1.55%) SOAP
14 50 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
15 47 (1.43%) OAuth2
16 45 (1.37%) RESTful
17 43 (1.31%) Spring
18 40 (1.22%) Spring Boot
19 39 (1.19%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 188 (5.72%) Onboarding
2 182 (5.54%) Data Structures
3 161 (4.90%) Cloud Native
4 133 (4.05%) Management Information System
5 126 (3.84%) Product Ownership
6 125 (3.81%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (2.98%) Data Centre
8 76 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
9 73 (2.22%) AI Agents
10 67 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
11 52 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 48 (1.46%) Life Science
13 44 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
14 43 (1.31%) Algorithms
15 42 (1.28%) Replication
15 42 (1.28%) SCADA
16 39 (1.19%) CMDB
17 38 (1.16%) Operational Technology
18 36 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
19 35 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 224 (6.82%) Windows
2 148 (4.51%) Linux
3 91 (2.77%) Windows Server
4 61 (1.86%) Unix
5 21 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.49%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.40%) Android
8 12 (0.37%) AIX
9 11 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.21%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.18%) zOS
13 5 (0.15%) VMS
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.091%) CentOS
15 3 (0.091%) VxWorks
16 2 (0.061%) HPUX
16 2 (0.061%) SUSE
16 2 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 890 (27.10%) Migration
2 747 (22.75%) Stakeholder Management
3 683 (20.80%) CI/CD
4 631 (19.21%) Agile
5 532 (16.20%) Data Migration
6 529 (16.11%) User Acceptance Testing
7 527 (16.05%) Data Modelling
8 506 (15.41%) Analytics
9 505 (15.38%) Data Validation
10 503 (15.32%) Problem-Solving
11 472 (14.37%) AI
12 464 (14.13%) Test Automation
13 461 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 458 (13.95%) DevOps
15 375 (11.42%) ETL
16 341 (10.38%) Data Governance
17 340 (10.35%) Business Intelligence
17 340 (10.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 329 (10.02%) Data Analysis
19 327 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 884 (26.92%) SQL
2 732 (22.29%) Python
3 164 (4.99%) Java
4 132 (4.02%) PowerShell
5 86 (2.62%) C#
6 85 (2.59%) JavaScript
7 69 (2.10%) Bash
8 59 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 43 (1.31%) C++
10 35 (1.07%) Bicep
11 34 (1.04%) Shell Script
12 32 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 29 (0.88%) R
14 26 (0.79%) PL/SQL
15 25 (0.76%) Apex Code
16 24 (0.73%) Go
17 23 (0.70%) C
18 22 (0.67%) VBA
19 19 (0.58%) T-SQL
20 17 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 677 (20.62%) Security Cleared
2 523 (15.93%) SC Cleared
3 231 (7.03%) Degree
4 97 (2.95%) DV Cleared
5 82 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (1.46%) AWS Certification
8 44 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (1.22%) ISTQB
10 37 (1.13%) ACCA
10 37 (1.13%) CIMA
11 33 (1.00%) CCNP
12 28 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 27 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 25 (0.76%) CISSP
14 25 (0.76%) PMP
15 22 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 21 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 19 (0.58%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 703 (21.41%) Data Quality
2 383 (11.66%) QA
3 109 (3.32%) GDPR
4 60 (1.83%) Accessibility
5 52 (1.58%) SLA
6 37 (1.13%) NIST
7 36 (1.10%) GxP
8 35 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 35 (1.07%) PMO
9 26 (0.79%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 23 (0.70%) GRC
11 21 (0.64%) ISO 20022
12 20 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
13 19 (0.58%) WCAG
14 17 (0.52%) GMP
15 14 (0.43%) NCSC
16 13 (0.40%) IFRS
17 12 (0.37%) ISO 19650
18 10 (0.30%) Def Stans
18 10 (0.30%) MiFID
System Software
1 133 (4.05%) Docker
2 125 (3.81%) Active Directory
3 94 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
5 35 (1.07%) Virtual Machines
6 27 (0.82%) Firmware
7 25 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.70%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.70%) vSphere
9 17 (0.52%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.15%) KVM
12 4 (0.12%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.061%) NFS
13 2 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.030%) HDFS
14 1 (0.030%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.030%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 1 (0.030%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 176 (5.36%) Kubernetes
2 116 (3.53%) Ansible
3 47 (1.43%) Grafana
4 37 (1.13%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.73%) FortiGate
7 22 (0.67%) SCCM
7 22 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.40%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.33%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.33%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.30%) Argo
10 10 (0.30%) Functional Safety
11 9 (0.27%) Control-M
12 6 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (0.18%) Kibana
12 6 (0.18%) VxRail
13 5 (0.15%) Puppet
13 5 (0.15%) vMotion
13 5 (0.15%) vRealize
Vendors
1 515 (15.68%) Microsoft
2 283 (8.62%) SAP
3 252 (7.67%) Oracle
4 194 (5.91%) Databricks
5 110 (3.35%) VMware
6 100 (3.05%) ServiceNow
7 95 (2.89%) Salesforce
8 90 (2.74%) Cisco
9 84 (2.56%) Google
10 59 (1.80%) Workday
11 57 (1.74%) IBM
12 36 (1.10%) Informatica
13 33 (1.00%) Fortinet
14 30 (0.91%) Juniper
14 30 (0.91%) Palo Alto
15 29 (0.88%) Zscaler
16 26 (0.79%) CyberArk
17 25 (0.76%) Splunk
18 22 (0.67%) Ariba
19 20 (0.61%) Sage