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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 94 134
Rank change year-on-year +50 +40 +4
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,131 778 762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.66% 2.66% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.46% 2.94% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 455 388
10th Percentile £350 £363 £320
25th Percentile £400 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £545 £525
Median % change year-on-year -11.01% +3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £718 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -7.32% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 44 146
10th Percentile £22.48 £25.56 £19.94
25th Percentile £45.52 £47.50 £48.81
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -4.08%
75th Percentile £72.25 £65.25 £75.23
90th Percentile £82.78 £75.18 £89.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
% change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -4.00%

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 39,061 26,469 37,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.38% 90.57% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,736 17,183 24,573
10th Percentile £314 £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 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,329 996 2,365
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £19.10 £19.99 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.51 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.25% -4.52% -11.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.38 £70.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.69% -10.34%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 +45 1,850 £490 -9.26% 872
UK excluding London +39 1,010 £475 -7.32% 714
London +70 865 £500 -9.09% 268
Work from Home +74 642 £488 -5.34% 341
North of England +41 253 £450 +1.41% 152
South East +2 212 £500 - 215
Midlands +42 207 £491 +3.37% 118
West Midlands +25 160 £491 +2.03% 77
North West +33 154 £420 -5.35% 74
South West +5 133 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +18 123 £492 +9.38% 96
Yorkshire +17 89 £462 +10.72% 51
Scotland +45 54 £404 -11.56% 42
East Midlands +3 44 £500 +8.93% 41
Northern Ireland +17 22 £413 -25.00% 5
Wales +9 20 £460 - 16
North East -9 13 £438 -39.66% 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 84 (3.94%) Confluence
2 44 (2.06%) SAS
3 43 (2.02%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.74%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (1.08%) SharePoint
6 22 (1.03%) Apache
7 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.52%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 9 (0.42%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
12 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) CICS
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.094%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 118 (5.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.52%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.094%) Sketch
12 1 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.047%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.047%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.047%) UXPin
12 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 99 (4.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.69%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.61%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 11 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.47%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.38%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.38%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.38%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.33%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.33%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.28%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 490 (22.99%) Azure
2 279 (13.09%) AWS
3 188 (8.82%) Power Platform
4 145 (6.80%) Azure DevOps
5 102 (4.79%) GitHub
6 94 (4.41%) GCP
7 66 (3.10%) Serverless
8 63 (2.96%) Amazon S3
9 60 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
10 59 (2.77%) Entra ID
11 57 (2.67%) Azure Data Factory
12 54 (2.53%) SaaS
13 51 (2.39%) OCI
14 46 (2.16%) Snowflake
15 41 (1.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.60%) Microsoft 365
18 33 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.31%) OpenShift
20 26 (1.22%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 79 (3.71%) Firewall
2 53 (2.49%) Network Security
3 36 (1.69%) TCP/IP
4 28 (1.31%) DNS
5 27 (1.27%) VLAN
6 25 (1.17%) VPN
7 24 (1.13%) Ethernet
8 22 (1.03%) HTTP
9 21 (0.99%) WAN
10 15 (0.70%) SAN
11 13 (0.61%) NAS
12 12 (0.56%) LAN
12 12 (0.56%) SD-WAN
12 12 (0.56%) Wireless
13 11 (0.52%) BGP
13 11 (0.52%) OSPF
14 9 (0.42%) Internet
14 9 (0.42%) SSL
15 8 (0.38%) DHCP
15 8 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (8.26%) Power BI
2 111 (5.21%) Metadata
3 104 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 63 (2.96%) Tableau
6 59 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
7 48 (2.25%) Data Lake
8 33 (1.55%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (1.45%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.41%) Azure SQL Database
11 29 (1.36%) Big Data
12 28 (1.31%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 27 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (1.22%) NoSQL
14 26 (1.22%) Oracle Database
15 24 (1.13%) Amazon Athena
15 24 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 20 (0.94%) Power Query
17 19 (0.89%) GIS
Development Applications
1 195 (9.15%) JIRA
2 129 (6.05%) Git
3 91 (4.27%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.24%) Selenium
5 58 (2.72%) GitLab
6 55 (2.58%) Postman
7 39 (1.83%) JUnit
8 37 (1.74%) Cucumber
9 34 (1.60%) JMeter
10 28 (1.31%) Oracle APEX
10 28 (1.31%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (1.03%) WebDriver
12 18 (0.84%) MLflow
12 18 (0.84%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.70%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.66%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.61%) Bitbucket
15 13 (0.61%) TestRail
16 12 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.56%) SpecFlow
General
1 710 (33.32%) Social Skills
2 616 (28.91%) Finance
3 411 (19.29%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (9.15%) Public Sector
5 176 (8.26%) Banking
6 120 (5.63%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 59 (2.77%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (2.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 42 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
12 35 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (1.64%) Legal
13 33 (1.55%) Electronics
14 31 (1.45%) Marketing
14 31 (1.45%) Retail
14 31 (1.45%) Telecoms
15 30 (1.41%) Billing
15 30 (1.41%) Financial Institution
16 29 (1.36%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 397 (18.63%) Analyst
2 212 (9.95%) Senior
3 209 (9.81%) Lead
4 187 (8.78%) Business Analyst
5 153 (7.18%) Data Engineer
6 149 (6.99%) Consultant
7 142 (6.66%) Developer
8 135 (6.34%) Architect
9 98 (4.60%) Data Analyst
10 80 (3.75%) Project Manager
11 63 (2.96%) Tester
12 51 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.16%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.02%) Test Engineer
15 42 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
16 41 (1.92%) Senior Developer
16 41 (1.92%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.92%) Test Analyst
17 40 (1.88%) Test Manager
18 35 (1.64%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (6.71%) REST
2 106 (4.97%) JSON
3 61 (2.86%) Kafka
3 61 (2.86%) Oracle Fusion
4 58 (2.72%) XML
5 57 (2.67%) Middleware
6 54 (2.53%) OAuth
7 52 (2.44%) PySpark
8 45 (2.11%) Node.js
9 44 (2.06%) SOAP
10 41 (1.92%) .NET
11 36 (1.69%) Playwright
12 33 (1.55%) Swagger
13 32 (1.50%) pytest
13 32 (1.50%) RESTful
14 30 (1.41%) Web Services
15 29 (1.36%) PyTorch
16 28 (1.31%) Pandas
17 27 (1.27%) SAML
18 26 (1.22%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.82%) Legacy Systems
2 109 (5.11%) Data Structures
3 97 (4.55%) Onboarding
4 88 (4.13%) Product Ownership
5 65 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 56 (2.63%) Management Information System
7 51 (2.39%) Data Centre
8 36 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
9 34 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 29 (1.36%) Replication
11 27 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
12 26 (1.22%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.13%) Life Science
14 24 (1.13%) Reference Data
15 22 (1.03%) NHS
15 22 (1.03%) Operational Technology
16 21 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (0.99%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.11%) Windows
2 88 (4.13%) Linux
3 29 (1.36%) Unix
4 14 (0.66%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
6 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.28%) zOS
7 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.23%) VMS
8 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.094%) Debian
11 1 (0.047%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.047%) pSOS
11 1 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.047%) Solaris
11 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 532 (24.96%) Migration
2 478 (22.43%) Agile
3 431 (20.23%) Problem-Solving
4 368 (17.27%) Stakeholder Management
5 367 (17.22%) CI/CD
6 361 (16.94%) Data Validation
7 332 (15.58%) Analytics
8 312 (14.64%) Data Migration
9 306 (14.36%) Data Modelling
10 304 (14.27%) DevOps
11 282 (13.23%) ETL
12 280 (13.14%) User Acceptance Testing
13 271 (12.72%) Test Automation
14 242 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
15 228 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 224 (10.51%) Business Intelligence
17 223 (10.46%) AI
18 214 (10.04%) Data Governance
19 194 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
20 175 (8.21%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 520 (24.40%) SQL
2 392 (18.40%) Python
3 106 (4.97%) Java
4 88 (4.13%) JavaScript
5 77 (3.61%) C#
6 53 (2.49%) PowerShell
7 52 (2.44%) PL/SQL
8 49 (2.30%) C++
9 41 (1.92%) C
10 39 (1.83%) Bash
11 36 (1.69%) TypeScript
12 27 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.22%) Bicep
14 25 (1.17%) R
15 21 (0.99%) Ada
16 19 (0.89%) Scala
17 18 (0.84%) T-SQL
18 16 (0.75%) Groovy
19 13 (0.61%) VBA
20 11 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 445 (20.88%) Security Cleared
2 322 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 194 (9.10%) Degree
4 65 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 56 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.92%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.41%) ISTQB
8 30 (1.41%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.31%) PMP
10 19 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
11 16 (0.75%) CCNP
12 15 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.70%) CISSP
12 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.61%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.61%) CBAP
14 10 (0.47%) CCNA
14 10 (0.47%) CTC Cleared
14 10 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (16.80%) Data Quality
2 273 (12.81%) QA
3 121 (5.68%) GDPR
4 79 (3.71%) NIST
5 69 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.55%) SLA
8 26 (1.22%) GxP
9 22 (1.03%) IFRS
9 22 (1.03%) PMO
10 19 (0.89%) HL7
10 19 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.84%) GRC
12 17 (0.80%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.80%) GMP
13 14 (0.66%) NIST 800
13 14 (0.66%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.61%) COBIT
14 13 (0.61%) NCSC
15 12 (0.56%) MiFID
System Software
1 80 (3.75%) Docker
2 50 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.22%) Firmware
5 13 (0.61%) Hyper-V
5 13 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.52%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.28%) vSphere
9 5 (0.23%) NFS
10 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.094%) Ceph
12 2 (0.094%) KVM
12 2 (0.094%) Lustre
12 2 (0.094%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.094%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.094%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 118 (5.54%) Kubernetes
2 94 (4.41%) Terraform
3 33 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
4 31 (1.45%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.41%) Ansible
5 30 (1.41%) Grafana
6 17 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (0.47%) Kibana
7 10 (0.47%) Puppet
8 9 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 8 (0.38%) SCCM
10 6 (0.28%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.28%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 280 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 218 (10.23%) Oracle
3 183 (8.59%) SAP
4 111 (5.21%) Databricks
5 86 (4.04%) ServiceNow
6 55 (2.58%) Salesforce
7 49 (2.30%) Google
8 47 (2.21%) VMware
9 45 (2.11%) Splunk
10 40 (1.88%) Cisco
11 34 (1.60%) Workday
12 31 (1.45%) Informatica
12 31 (1.45%) MuleSoft
13 29 (1.36%) Sage
14 23 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.99%) CyberArk
16 20 (0.94%) OpenAI
17 19 (0.89%) IBM
18 15 (0.70%) Dell
19 14 (0.66%) Avaloq