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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 72 118
Rank change year-on-year +36 +46 +38
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,654 1,039 840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.17% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.09% 3.74% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,580 617 410
10th Percentile £340 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £419 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £596 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -7.84% +2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 70 181
10th Percentile £17.23 £18.05 £26.88
25th Percentile £26.71 £41.74 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.04%

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 43,613 27,816 36,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.98% 90.91% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,139 17,565 23,448
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,612 1,364 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.49 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +8.91%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 2,310 £500 -4.76% 762
UK excluding London +27 1,244 £470 -7.84% 624
London +50 1,104 £514 -4.86% 270
Work from Home +49 777 £488 -2.50% 293
North of England +42 307 £450 - 117
Midlands +37 287 £492 +9.33% 99
South East -1 273 £504 +0.75% 244
West Midlands +35 208 £478 +18.52% 55
North West +25 168 £440 -2.22% 56
East of England +9 134 £500 - 54
South West +4 134 £504 -12.39% 87
Yorkshire +28 125 £461 +10.53% 38
Scotland +33 84 £407 -13.12% 29
East Midlands +22 74 £525 +15.51% 44
Wales +8 26 £455 +71.70% 8
North East -20 17 £425 -22.73% 23
Northern Ireland +9 11 £384 -34.96% 6

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 (3.32%) Confluence
2 64 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (1.96%) SAS
4 47 (1.77%) SharePoint
5 45 (1.70%) Apache Spark
6 25 (0.94%) Apache
7 14 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.26%) Appian
10 7 (0.26%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.15%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 177 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.58%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 26 (0.98%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 2 (0.075%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.075%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.075%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.075%) Sketch
11 2 (0.075%) Windchill
12 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 123 (4.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.60%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.41%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.41%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.38%) iTrent
8 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
9 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 9 (0.34%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
11 7 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
11 7 (0.26%) Sage X3
11 7 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.26%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 543 (20.46%) Azure
2 327 (12.32%) AWS
3 261 (9.83%) Power Platform
4 143 (5.39%) Azure DevOps
5 133 (5.01%) GCP
6 117 (4.41%) GitHub
7 89 (3.35%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.60%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.52%) Serverless
10 66 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
11 62 (2.34%) Azure Data Factory
12 58 (2.19%) Amazon S3
13 51 (1.92%) SaaS
14 49 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
15 40 (1.51%) dbt
16 38 (1.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 37 (1.39%) OCI
18 35 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
19 34 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
20 32 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.07%) Firewall
2 67 (2.52%) Network Security
3 47 (1.77%) VLAN
4 43 (1.62%) DNS
5 41 (1.54%) WAN
6 40 (1.51%) VPN
7 33 (1.24%) TCP/IP
8 32 (1.21%) BGP
9 23 (0.87%) LAN
9 23 (0.87%) OSPF
9 23 (0.87%) SAN
9 23 (0.87%) Wireless
10 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
11 20 (0.75%) Ethernet
12 18 (0.68%) DHCP
13 17 (0.64%) Internet
13 17 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.45%) NAS
15 12 (0.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 244 (9.19%) Power BI
2 136 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
3 103 (3.88%) Metadata
4 99 (3.73%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
6 74 (2.79%) Tableau
7 73 (2.75%) Data Lake
8 68 (2.56%) Relational Database
9 35 (1.32%) Big Data
10 34 (1.28%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 33 (1.24%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.09%) NoSQL
13 28 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.02%) Power Query
14 27 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 25 (0.94%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
17 23 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
18 22 (0.83%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 247 (9.31%) JIRA
2 154 (5.80%) Git
3 98 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.68%) GitLab
5 59 (2.22%) Selenium
6 51 (1.92%) Postman
7 49 (1.85%) JMeter
8 39 (1.47%) JUnit
9 36 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.17%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.98%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.64%) Gatling
13 17 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.49%) MLflow
15 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.41%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.38%) Maven
17 10 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
General
1 791 (29.80%) Finance
2 778 (29.31%) Social Skills
3 489 (18.43%) Analytical Skills
4 225 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 206 (7.76%) Banking
6 150 (5.65%) Documentation Skills
7 91 (3.43%) Manufacturing
8 74 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 68 (2.56%) Retail
10 58 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 50 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
12 47 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 47 (1.77%) Telecoms
13 44 (1.66%) Legal
14 43 (1.62%) Front Office
15 39 (1.47%) General Ledger
16 38 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
16 38 (1.43%) Marketing
17 35 (1.32%) Billing
17 35 (1.32%) Law
Job Titles
1 470 (17.71%) Analyst
2 271 (10.21%) Senior
3 261 (9.83%) Lead
4 225 (8.48%) Business Analyst
5 200 (7.54%) Consultant
5 200 (7.54%) Data Engineer
6 162 (6.10%) Architect
7 151 (5.69%) Developer
8 131 (4.94%) Data Analyst
9 83 (3.13%) Project Manager
10 80 (3.01%) Test Engineer
11 68 (2.56%) Tester
12 55 (2.07%) Network Engineer
13 51 (1.92%) Test Manager
14 48 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
15 47 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 47 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
16 45 (1.70%) Senior Analyst
17 44 (1.66%) Security Engineer
17 44 (1.66%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.82%) REST
2 79 (2.98%) JSON
3 73 (2.75%) Kafka
4 53 (2.00%) PySpark
5 51 (1.92%) Middleware
5 51 (1.92%) XML
6 50 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 47 (1.77%) OAuth
8 44 (1.66%) Spring
9 40 (1.51%) .NET
10 38 (1.43%) pytest
11 37 (1.39%) SOAP
12 36 (1.36%) RESTful
13 35 (1.32%) Playwright
14 34 (1.28%) Web Services
15 33 (1.24%) Pandas
16 32 (1.21%) Swagger
17 30 (1.13%) Node.js
18 26 (0.98%) OAuth2
18 26 (0.98%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 134 (5.05%) Data Structures
2 133 (5.01%) Legacy Systems
3 132 (4.97%) Onboarding
4 114 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 114 (4.30%) Product Ownership
5 85 (3.20%) Data Centre
6 66 (2.49%) Management Information System
7 55 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
8 50 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
9 42 (1.58%) Life Science
10 40 (1.51%) SCADA
11 35 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
12 34 (1.28%) AI Agents
13 32 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.21%) NHS
14 31 (1.17%) Operational Technology
14 31 (1.17%) Replication
14 31 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 30 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
16 29 (1.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 141 (5.31%) Windows
2 95 (3.58%) Linux
3 32 (1.21%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.13%) Unix
5 17 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.41%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.075%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.075%) HPUX
12 2 (0.075%) Solaris
12 2 (0.075%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.075%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.038%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 717 (27.02%) Migration
2 524 (19.74%) Agile
3 471 (17.75%) Stakeholder Management
4 449 (16.92%) Data Validation
5 447 (16.84%) Problem-Solving
6 443 (16.69%) CI/CD
7 420 (15.83%) User Acceptance Testing
8 418 (15.75%) Data Migration
9 416 (15.67%) Analytics
10 412 (15.52%) Data Modelling
11 339 (12.77%) AI
12 322 (12.13%) DevOps
12 322 (12.13%) ETL
13 321 (12.09%) Test Automation
14 306 (11.53%) Continuous Improvement
15 285 (10.74%) Business Intelligence
16 281 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 255 (9.61%) Data Analysis
18 248 (9.34%) Data Governance
19 241 (9.08%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 621 (23.40%) SQL
2 469 (17.67%) Python
3 123 (4.63%) Java
4 67 (2.52%) PowerShell
5 56 (2.11%) C#
6 47 (1.77%) Bash
7 41 (1.54%) C++
8 40 (1.51%) JavaScript
9 38 (1.43%) C
10 33 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 33 (1.24%) TypeScript
11 29 (1.09%) Apex Code
12 27 (1.02%) Bicep
13 25 (0.94%) PL/SQL
14 22 (0.83%) R
15 21 (0.79%) Ada
15 21 (0.79%) Scala
16 19 (0.72%) VBA
17 18 (0.68%) MATLAB
18 17 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 476 (17.94%) Security Cleared
2 351 (13.23%) SC Cleared
3 189 (7.12%) Degree
4 64 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.00%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 30 (1.13%) CCNP
9 29 (1.09%) PMI Certification
10 25 (0.94%) PMP
11 23 (0.87%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.83%) CISSP
13 20 (0.75%) ACCA
14 19 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 18 (0.68%) CIMA
16 17 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 16 (0.60%) CCNA
18 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
19 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
20 13 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (17.33%) Data Quality
2 317 (11.94%) QA
3 122 (4.60%) GDPR
4 61 (2.30%) NIST
5 55 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 42 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.39%) SLA
8 34 (1.28%) PMO
9 33 (1.24%) GxP
10 23 (0.87%) IFRS
11 17 (0.64%) Def Stans
11 17 (0.64%) GRC
12 16 (0.60%) GMP
12 16 (0.60%) HL7
12 16 (0.60%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.57%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.49%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.45%) NCSC
15 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.45%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 111 (4.18%) Docker
2 77 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 69 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.68%) Firmware
8 17 (0.64%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.64%) vSphere
9 13 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.23%) NFS
11 5 (0.19%) KVM
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.075%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.075%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.075%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.038%) etcd
Systems Management
1 157 (5.92%) Kubernetes
2 123 (4.63%) Terraform
3 55 (2.07%) Prometheus
4 51 (1.92%) Ansible
5 50 (1.88%) Grafana
6 28 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.87%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.30%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.23%) Kibana
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) Puppet
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 359 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 243 (9.16%) SAP
3 223 (8.40%) Oracle
4 117 (4.41%) Databricks
5 90 (3.39%) Salesforce
6 83 (3.13%) VMware
7 79 (2.98%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.26%) Cisco
9 47 (1.77%) Google
10 41 (1.54%) Splunk
11 38 (1.43%) Workday
12 34 (1.28%) Informatica
13 32 (1.21%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.02%) Fortinet
14 27 (1.02%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.98%) Sage
16 24 (0.90%) IBM
17 22 (0.83%) Juniper
18 21 (0.79%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.75%) IFS